Whoa, Canada!
The logo of The Canadian Press has been deeply perturbing me—because I am (1) a stickler for proper English grammar and (2) something of a typography and design tyrant.
I do understand the idea: the left and right red fields of the Canadian flag were “cleverly” transformed into opening and closing quotation marks:
© The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
However, the journalists and writers who make up the organization (of all people) should have told the graphic designers that curly, curved, or smart quotation marks (also known as typographic or book quotation marks) follow a very specific form. Opening quotation marks resemble a pair of commas rotated 180 degrees and raised to the top of the line, while closing quotation marks resemble commas likewise raised to the top of the line. In other words, they should evoke the numbers 66 and 99:
And when a pair of single quotation marks—or apostrophes—is used, as in The Canadian Press logo, the marks should resemble the numbers 6 and 9:
Therefore, their logo—had the quotation marks been designed correctly—should have looked like this instead:
