Symbol.guide is blacklisted

 
The Sym­bol.guide web­site has copied, with­out per­mis­sion, a ton of ma­te­r­ial from this book, Prac­ti­cal Ty­pog­ra­phy. This is a vi­o­la­tion of my copy­right. There­fore, I am per­ma­nently ban­ning vis­i­tors from Symbol.guide.

The cre­ators of Sym­bol.guide, Poon Wen Ang and Mar­vin Gu­nawan, have put a link to this book at the bot­tom of their site as a “source”. Given their use of this ma­te­r­ial, that’s not nearly ad­e­quate. Why not? Be­cause they haven’t merely re­lied on this book for re­search. Rather, they’ve di­rectly copied sen­tences & para­graphs of my writ­ing and dropped them into their own site, with­out quo­ta­tion marks or at­tri­bu­tion. (Or per­mis­sion—which I would not have given.)

One of many ex­am­ples I could offer:

The em dash, from this book:

“The em dash () is typ­i­cally about as wide as a cap­i­tal H. … The em dash is used to make a break be­tween parts of a sen­tence. Use it when a comma is too weak, but a colon, semi­colon, or pair of paren­the­ses is too strong. The em dash puts a nice pause in the text—and it is un­der­used in pro­fes­sional writing.”

The em dash, on Symbol.guide:

“The em-dash is typ­i­cally about as wide as a cap­i­tal H. The em-dash is used to make a break be­tween parts of a sen­tence. Use it when a comma is too weak, but a colon, semi­colon, or pair of paren­the­ses is too strong. The em dash puts a nice pause in the text—and it is un­der­used in pro­fes­sional writing.”

On his web­site tout­ing his ser­vices as a “prod­uct de­siger”, Mr. Wen claims that he “be­lieve[s] in com­bin­ing re­search in­sights, big ideas, and strate­gic think­ing.” Rip­ping off some­one else’s work—a “big idea” for the ages.

—Matthew But­t­er­ick
mb@mb­type.com

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