I Use Proper Typography in Gemtext

You should always use proper typography, even if you have to do it manually.

In Markdown, thereʼs always a step in-between to generate the display format. Mostly itʼs HTML. So itʼs easy to just use ASCII punctuation, for example, and let the software, which creates the HTML output, take care of the necessary conversions.

But in Gemtext, thereʼs no such intermediary. So I unashamedly type those in myself. Using macOS, this is easily supported through the “option” key¹.

Some examples for US keyboards:

option ; => … (ellipsis)

option - => – (n-dash)

option shift - => — (m-dash)

option [ => “ (left double quote)

option shift [ => ” (right double quote)

option ] => ‘ (left single quote)

option shift ] => ’ (right single quote)

On systems where itʼs not that easy, the character/emoji picker and a good text editor with search and replace over all Gemtext files should suffice. Only ASCII art could get in the way. Probably another reason to avoid it.

¹ The same goes for footnotes. But you have to use the character viewer.