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