here - InDesign User Group

IDUG Trivia
1. Question Notes
2. What is the official name
of a return character/
paragraph symbol?
3. What is the official name
of the unique slash used
for a fraction?
(it’s not the forward slash, seen here:)
1
/4
4. What are the official
names of the “foot” and
the “inch” marks?
' "
= a “Pilcrow”
1
⁄4 = a “Virgule”
How do you type the virgule slash?
Shift-Option-!
(or, Shift-Alt-! on Windows)
“Prime” and “Double Prime”
How do you type them?
a. You could turn off the Preferences for
“Typographer’s Quotes,” but that would
be too diffcult. Just add the Control
key on a Mac when typing quite marks!
Notice, by the way they aren’t supposed to be
straight—they are slanted, like italic.
b. Not every font designer creates these
characters in their font. If not, you
would italicise them to be true prime
or double prime marks.
c. I use a GREP style to accomplish this
automatically!
5. Which is the correct dash
to use between digits in
a phone number?
6. What is the width of an
“En Dash”?
The “En Dash.”
Created with Option-hyphen,
or Alt-hypen on PC
It’s not the width of the letter “N,” in either upper or
lower case—as is often cited.
Rather, it is half the height between the ascenders
and the decenders of a font, turned sideways. In
English, “it’s the font height turned
sideways.”
(An “Em Dash” is the full distance between ascenders
and decenders, turned sideways.) In digital type, it’s
really rather arbitrary.
Note these sample fonts:
n–N M—m (Linoscript)
n–N M—m (Adobe Devanagari)
n–N M—m (Abadi MT Cond. Extra Bold )
© Rick Burress, Artistec Inc.

1. Notes