Kaizen Media Blog

It’s time to break out the crystal ball and look into the future to see what the new year holds.

It’s too cloudy to see but wait, it’s getting clearer,  it’s a little foggy but I see:

CSS – I see pure, clean CSS replacing tables in all new web design concepts.

Dutch – If now is the best time to do anything, then it’s the best time to learn Dutch. By this time next year I see strong understanding of the language and how it all fits together. Strong enough to conduct business with Dutch people in Holland.

Flash – Very foggy, but it looks like there will be significant development with animated banners and headers. Great potential swirls and surrounds this area.
Alas, the fog has become too thick to see more.  The universe will unfold as it may…

Toronto, ON

Sparkle Janitorial Services is a professional cleaning company specializing in office cleaning, medical facilities maintenance, construction clean ups and specialty janitorial services in the GTA.

We built and developed their website from the ground up to reflect their high standards of cleanliness and commitment to customer satisfaction.

Click here to visit www.sparklejanitorial.ca.

The Ellipsis

An ellipsis is a punctuation mark comprised of a series of dots, or points indicating an ommission in the text, an interruption or hesitation. The ellipsis is usually three dots, although there are instances when they appear to be four. Here’s some guidelines for for using ellipses:

Most fonts have a built-in ellipsis character, use the following:

• Mac: Option-semicolon
• Windows: ALT 0133
• XHTML entity: …
• Character reference: …
• Unicode reference u2026

There are a few grammatical/typographic rules to follow:

1. An ellipsis at the end of a sentence is not followed by a full-stop unless it’s inside a quote or the following sentence is functionally complete. Eg. I thought ‘we could go’.
2. When a complete sentence is ended in an ellipsis, indicating some omitted material, there is a full-stop and the next sentence begins with a capital letter. Eg. Well, I thought. Never mind, it doesn’t matter.
3. Sentences ending in an exclamation, or question, mark retain their mark after the ellipsis. Eg. Could we?

Quotation marks

Quotation marks, also called inverted commas, are used to wrap quotation. In the UK, it is common practice to use single marks ( ‘ ’ ) except for when there are quotes within quotes, where double marks are used. Whereas in the US it is common practice to use double marks ( “ ” ).

Single marks:

• Mac: Option+] for left, Shift+Option+] for right
• PC: ALT 0145 for left, ALT 0146 for right
• XHTML entity: ‘ for left, ’ for right
• Character reference:‘ for left, ’ for right
• Unicode reference:‘ for left, ’ for right

Double marks:

• Mac: Option+[ for left, Shift+Option+[ for right
• PC: ALT 0147 for left, ALT 0148 for right
• XHTML entity: “ for left, ” for right
• Character reference:“ for left, ” for right
• Unicode reference:“ for left, ” for right

Quotation marks are the poor fellows which have perhaps suffered the most at the hands of computing and DTP. The mark on your keyboard next to the colon and semi colon is not a quotation mark, it is a prime and double-prime. A prime is the symbol commonly used for feet (12′), a double prime for inches (12′ 6″). Primes can be slanted and can therefore sometimes look like quotation marks, so care needs to be taken to make sure you use the right glyph.

This was an excerpt from Mark Boulton’s The Right Glyph for the Job

UPDATE: We redesigned DoctorBaird.com (2009)

Toronto, ON

Doctor Baird is a chiropractor with a convenient downtown Yorkville location specializing in pregnancy & pediatrics, low level laser therapy, sports therapy and custom orthotics.

We developed Dr. Baird’s website to reflect the calm, serene nature of her practice while optimizing the pages for search engines.

Click here to visit www.doctorbaird.com.

Calgary, AB

Silver Bow Woodcraft Ltd. specialize in custom woodwork and they’re equipped to offer a wide range of woodworking services from special or exotic wood types, unique door styles, custom fittings to custom finishes and more.

We redesigned their website and added showroom picture gallery pages to display some of their finer work.

Click here to visit www.silverbowwoodcraft.com.