{"id":7,"date":"2002-09-24T23:48:47","date_gmt":"2002-09-25T03:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=7"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"smart_punctuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2002\/09\/24\/smart_punctuation\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Punctuation"},"content":{"rendered":"My current source of frustration with Movable Type is that smart punctuation doesn&rsquo;t Just Work. <a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\">Daring Fireball<\/a> recommends storing dumb punctuation in the database and using a Movable Type template module to <a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2002\/08\/movable_type_smart_quote_devilry.html\">educate it during the rendering process<\/a>. Certainly this is better than writing the HTML entities by hand, but I think the database should store the truth. That&rsquo;s the only way to ensure that the output is what the author intended, because every education algorithm gets a few cases wrong. Sure, most of these cases involve inch marks, nested quotations, or deliberate examples of incorrect punctuation, but it&rsquo;s the principle! I shouldn&rsquo;t have to think about how the text will be processed on the way out of the database, because that might change.\n\n\n\nCurrent solution: make a BBEdit stationery pad with smart quotes, soft wrapping, and the language set to HTML. Generate HTML using the Markup tools to make sure it uses dumb quotes. If I want dumb quotes for an inch mark, hold down Control. Use the Translate tool just before pasting into iCab. Flout Amdahl&rsquo;s law.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My current source of frustration with Movable Type is that smart punctuation doesn&rsquo;t Just Work. Daring Fireball recommends storing dumb punctuation in the database and using a Movable Type template module to educate it during the rendering process. Certainly this is better than writing the HTML entities by hand, but I think the database should [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}