Mobile Editing

[kimmpossible]

I have noticed that if a customer designs an invitation from a mobile device, the apostrophe's come out in another font and messes with the design of the product. I tried from my phone as well and the same thing happens, but it works great from my PC. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I will attach a photo of an invitation a customer sent me. Notice on the name "Charlotte's" the apostrophe is a different font and it moves the whole line down a bit.

Thank you,

Kim Wilhite

[Cat]

Very interesting. I don't know how to solve the problem, but I'm pretty sure I know what's happening. There are actually 2 separate characters that can be used as an apostrophe. The first is the generic straight apostrophe (ASCII code 39). It was the original apostrophe designed back in the old days when there weren't as many characters available. It isn't used much these days because people generally prefer the right single quotation mark (Unicode 2019) because it is curved.

So most apps have some sort of "smart quote" technology that changes a straight apostrophe to a single right quote when it's typed in. I'm betting that when the product is edited on a phone, it's somehow not employing the "smart quote" technology and it's not switching the straight apostrophe character to a single right quote. I don't know if that's something to do with Zazzle's app, or if it has to do with the operating system on the phone or what, but that's my guess as to what's happening.

I realize that's not terribly helpful though, since I haven't got a clue what to do to solve the issue. My only suggestion would be to advise the customer to leave the original apostrophe in place and just edit the name part of that field - but that only works if you're communicating with them. Very interesting problem...

[Cat]

p.s. As to why that character appears to be a different font, I would guess that since that straight apostrophe character is a bit of a relic at this point, the font designer likely didn't put anything in that character. When that happens, the system just fills it in with some sort of basic system font. That's my guess, anyhow!

[kimmpossible]

Thanks for the input, Cat . I totally understand what you’re saying. I wish there was an easy fix, but it sounds like a complicated issue. For now, I am going to try to limit apostrophes on future designs and leave a note for customers on existing designs. 

[Cat]

That sounds like an excellent idea. I should probably go look at my designs and see how many of them might be impacted by this. I wonder if the problem is bigger with certain fonts - like maybe some fonts actually do have the straight apostrophe character, so it isn't such an issue? Well anyhow, thanks for bringing it to our attention!