If hanging the quotes looks bad, just don’t hang them. Most designers haven’t got a clue that software is even capable of such a thing, so not doing it isn’t going to offend anyone.

could you live without the quotes?

dpiderman: The qoutes need to stay as it’s part of the poem.

James: I was taught starting lines with curly qoutes makes them appear indented at first glance. Perhaps I could use single curly qoutes. ’Qoute’

I would like to learn more on hanging punctuation, so please share knowledge!

I have seen poetry books set with hanging double quotes — hanging fully into the margin — and I didn’t think it worked. The eye was continually drawn to them.

Better to go with single quotes I think — which is, after all, the British standard. Then kern them into the margin slightly.

James: I was taught starting lines with curly qoutes makes them appear indented at first glance.

Ah, yes — but you’re the designer or typesetter now. What does your eye tell you in this particular situation?

Eluard: The book is norwegian. Standard would be «arrow qoutes».

I’m pulling knowledge into work, so it’s of my interest to ask questions when things I’ve been taught don’t seem right.

Frode — yes, I understood that it was not in English. I was just saying that single quotes are the standard in a place that is much closer to you than America. :)

Double quotes overwhelm a line of poetry IMO.

When setting poetry, I usually hang quotes. Double ones as well, but less far out than single quotes. If you want to change it (e.g. to arrow quotes), make sure to check that with the writer of the poem, because from experience I know poets often consider everything in their poems very carefully. But that is obvious.

As long as we’re giving personal points of view . . .

When setting poetry, I usually do not hang quotes. It would depend on a number of factors. Since we only work for publishers, the publisher’s editor usually has a strong preference. Lacking that, if for some reason I really want to hang the quotes, I would try to get up with the poet (assuming the publisher doesn’t mind, i.e., we’d go through the publisher).

Before even thinking of hanging the quotes though, I’d look at the poetry. Since hanging punctuation is not much used in the States in bookwork, hanging quotes tends to look like jacket blurbs & other advertising. Maybe it’s different in Europe & other parts of the world.

An advertising look is usually not what you want in poetry. But poetry sometimes has multiple levels of indented lines, and sometimes there is a pattern to these indents. It use to be that the poet prepared the MS on a typewriter, i.e., always monospaced. Translating that feel into typeset copy can be challenging, and it was the comp’s job to do that.

One of the hardest jobs I worked on had long selections from A.R. Ammons. A copy of the tape had been cut apart & pasted up on 8.5x11 sheets & then photocopied, so it was now pages rather than the roll as split by Ammons. When you went from one sheet to the next, it was devilishly hard to tell you where you were in the indent structure.

* * *

I have yet to find anything that overrides Ward’s *Crystal Goblet* dictum for design & composition, but also find very few designers (or design teachers) who don’t abandon it to strut their stuff & tart things up.

FWIW

I think it depends on circumstances, one of which is the typeface.
Some fonts have honking big quotemarks, others are more discreet.

Another thing to bear in mind is that poetry is often re-read—not later, but in the initial reading session—so I wonder if this business of hanging quotes is more or less of an issue in a re-read?

Thanks guys. This question goes out to all of you: Which glyphs (punctuation) do you usually hang? I’m thinking generally.