From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography

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19 Hang punctuation in small chunks of text

19 Hang punctuation in small chunks of text

From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography

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19 Hang punctuation in small chunks of text

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- Law 19: Hang punctuation in small chunks of text. When you have a small chunk of text that contains punctuation marks, the punctuation marks should be hung off of the aligned edge. What does that mean? Hanging punctuation may be a new phrase that you've never heard before. Let's look at a few examples to explain the concept. In this first example, we've got a page from a document, and we're featuring a pull quote on this page. The pull quote is helping us break up some of the text on the page and add some visual interest. Notice how the opening quotation marks have been left-aligned with the rest of the text. In this example, the punctuation is not hung. In the second example, we've got the same text, but now the punctuation has been hung. Do you see how the opening quotation mark is actually hung outside of the main text block? See how it's been scooted to the left just a bit? Looking at both of these examples, notice how the first line in this example appears to be indented just a…

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