Type tips You Can Use

Em dash, en dash and hyphen... which goes where?

Use an em dash when there is a break in voice or thought. Windows: Alt+Shift+Hyphen,
Mac: Option+Shift+Hyphen

Use an en dash when separating a range of numbers or times. Windows: Alt+Hyphen,
Mac: Option+Hyphen

Use a hyphen when combining adjectives (e.g. first-rate), pairing nouns (e.g. scholar-athlete), or using prefixes with capitalized words (e.g. post-Renaissance).

What in the *#!@ are Dingbats?

According to Wikipedia, "a dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a 'printer's ornament.' The term supposedly originated as onomatopoeia in old style metal-type print shops, where extra space around text or illustrations would be filled by 'ding'ing an ornament into the space then 'bat'ing tight to be ready for inking.

The term continued to be used in the computer industry to describe fonts that had symbols and shapes in the positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters."

The neat thing about dingbats is that they come in a myriad of shapes and symbols, everything from animals to zodiac signs. AND they are scalable—just like fonts, you can enlarge them as big as you want. I used a few dingbats recently from a "font" that is of grapes and grapeleaves, enlarged them to about 300 points, converted them to outlines in Illustrator, applied a light color tint and put them in the background of a brochure for a winery. It's so easy and makes a big, but subtle impact.

In fact, you can see this brochure in my recently completed graphic design portfolio on my website at www.dianewestdesign.com.