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Typesetting Tips for Classy Titles

This document provides typesetting tips for creating classy titles in After Effects, including: 1. Using proper opening and closing curly quotes instead of straight quotes, and how to manually type these on Mac and Windows keyboards. 2. Using tick marks, feet (′), inches (′′), and multiplication (×) symbols from the Symbol font when the regular characters do not look good in the font being used. 3. The difference between hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, and how to manually type these on Mac and Windows keyboards.

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57 views1 page

Typesetting Tips for Classy Titles

This document provides typesetting tips for creating classy titles in After Effects, including: 1. Using proper opening and closing curly quotes instead of straight quotes, and how to manually type these on Mac and Windows keyboards. 2. Using tick marks, feet (′), inches (′′), and multiplication (×) symbols from the Symbol font when the regular characters do not look good in the font being used. 3. The difference between hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, and how to manually type these on Mac and Windows keyboards.

Uploaded by

odelaine
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

After Effects Apprentice – Typesetting Tips

When typesetting classy titles, it’s all in the details:

Lose the Inches


A typesetting no-no is using neutral quotes instead of proper opening and closing
curly quotes. After Effects offers a Smart Quotes option (available from the Character
palette’s Options menu) that will substitute real curly quotes for the easy-to-use ' and "
keys on your keyboard. If you need to outsmart this feature, or are using a different
program to create your titles, here’s a guide to typing them manually:

Character Macintosh Windows


opening single quote ‘ O] Alt-0145
closing single quote ’ OS] Alt-0146
opening double quote “ O[ Alt-0147
closing double quote ” OS[ Alt-0148

The Real Feet and Inches


It’s acceptable to use the regular tick marks (the ' and " characters) to indicate feet and
inches provided the font you’re using produces good results. If not, you can use the
Symbol font for correctly angled tick marks:

Character Mac (OS X font = Symbol.dfont)


feet (or minutes) ′ O4
inches (or seconds) ″ O, (comma)

Similarly, the regular “x” in a sans serif font may work fine for the multiplication
symbol, but it may be unsuitable in an ornate display font. Again, use the Symbol font:
multiplication × Oy (Yen symbol)

Very Dashing
We’re sure you know better than to type two hyphens (--) instead of a dash (–), but did
you know there are two types of dashes? For titles, you’re more likely to need the en
dash (–), which is used to denote ranges of time, distances, and so on.
For example: Elvis Presley, 1935–1977.

Character Macintosh Windows


en dash – O- Alt-0150
em dash — OS- Alt-0151

(In case you’re curious, one em is a unit of space that’s equal to the point size – so in
12 pt type, an em is equal to 12 points. Half of an em is called an en. )

Courtesy After Effects Apprentice 2nd Edition. © Trish & Chris Meyer, 2008

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