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Web Typography Sucks
Richard Rutter Mark Boulton
RR: We’re here to talk about web typography sucks - how it does, why it needn’t, when it doesn’t and how we can all do something about it. Let’s talk about what we mean by typography...

typography /tʌɪ'pɒgrəfi/ •n.
 the art or process of setting and arranging types and printing from them.  the style and appearance of printed matter. 2
Oxford English Dictionary RR: Definition from the OED. It’s not really appropriate - it’s all about printed matter and the days of metal type. I wrote to OED and they agreed the definition is out of date and said the word is under review. What we need is another definition.

typography /tʌɪ'pɒgrəfi/ •n.
 the mechanical notation and arrangement of language. 
Type & Typography by Phil Baines RR: Definition from typographer & author Phil Baines in his book Type & Typography. Where mechanical include all things digital and language is the conveyance of info and ideas. So why does web typography suck?

6'10" 50°49'33"
MB: Anybody recognise these characters? These are primes.

6'10" 50°49'33"
MB: They have a specific purpose...

6'10" 50°49'33"
MB: They are not quote marks or apostrophes.

"It's a bloody aardvark!"
MB: So when we see punctuation like this throughout the Web, it is wrong.

“It’s a bloody aardvark!”
MB: This is the right way to do it, using the correct characters.

- hyphen – en dash — em dash
− minus

Müller-Brockmann
3–6 April; 25–30 mm a phrase marker – thus – with spaces
a phrase marker—thus—with no spaces — Doesn’t sound much like a bee to me. — It’s a bloody aardvark!
4−1=3

MB: There are cultural and stylistic differences in the usage of these characters. For example the Hart’s Typesetting Rules in the UK, states Em dashes should be used as a phrase marker with no spaces. The Chicago Manual of Style states an En dash should be used with a hair, or thin space, either side.
The minus is a distinctly different character. It appears to be the same length of an en dash, but is thicker to match the equals sign.

RR: The Sun, a UK newspaper, has a reading age of eight years old.