Definition: In desktop publishing, typographical punctuation marks refers to certain special characters that don't appear on a standard keyboard. They are usually accessed by typing a series of keystrokes. These typographical punctuation marks include curly quotation marks, a proper curly apostrophe, en dash, em dash, and ellipsis.
Typewritten material, emails, and other communications often use what is called the typewriter equivalent of proper typographical punctuation marks. These include using a double hyphen in place of an em dash, using the double quote marks key in place of both the proper opening and closing double quotation marks, and typing a bunch of periods in place of the ellipsis. When found in typeset material, failure to use typographical punctuation marks is often seen as a sign of laziness or amateur text composition.
Automatic Typographical Punctuation Marks
Many word processing and desktop publishing software programs have a feature known as smart quotes that will automatically convert straight apostrophes (and quotation marks) to their typographically correct equivalent. This option can be turned off or overridden -- a necessity when the intent is to use a straight apostrophe or prime for mathematical notations, for example.Also Known As: curly quotes | smart quotes | typographer's punctuation marks | typographer's marks
