For at least the third consecutive Christmas season, Hershey's has been running a very pleasant, very effective and very simple animated Christmas commercial featuring its iconic Hershey's Kisses.
Instead of a proper curly or slanted apostrophe, the company name at the end of the commercial has an inappropriate straight apostrophe. That's what comes from an old-fashioned typewriter or the primitive software used in a blog like this one, not what can come from word processing or graphics software that produces proper typographers' marks. The text line includes two copyright symbols, so the software certainly could have produced a curly apostrophe. Did the designer fuck up, or was she or he being deliberately incorrect?
Sadly and inexplicably the company -- with sales of nearly $7.5 billion, a
city named after it and an advertising budget budget of about $600 million --
used amateur typography in the commercial.
Instead of a proper curly or slanted apostrophe, the company name at the end of the commercial has an inappropriate straight apostrophe. That's what comes from an old-fashioned typewriter or the primitive software used in a blog like this one, not what can come from word processing or graphics software that produces proper typographers' marks. The text line includes two copyright symbols, so the software certainly could have produced a curly apostrophe. Did the designer fuck up, or was she or he being deliberately incorrect?
Am I the only one who notices and cares about this stuff?

In packaging, logos, advertising and on books, it's important to use a proper curly apostrophe.
Hershey's has been in business since 1876. Early packaging used traditional curly apostrophes. The typographer did a nice job kerning the apostrophe and "Y."
The Hershey products now use modern, non-curly, slanted apostrophes. That's OK, too.
K'ick a'ss.
ReplyDeleteThis reader finds curly apostrophes and quote marks distracting. Hence I use straight ones in my typography. Why should I use something I don't like?
ReplyDeleteWhen you type you can press any keys you choose to, even if the result is outdated, unnecessary and unprofessional.
Delete