I had the exact same comment from a city planner recently! The font used was regular old simplex (leroy, romans, etc... that type) that a lot of people use. He insisted over and over that the first quotation mark surrounding the plat name in the dedication was pointing the wrong way and we had to reverse it. Of course, this is impossible. What's worse, it's the same font we've used on hundreds (maybe thousands) of plats over the past 25+ years in cities all over the region - including his. No one had a problem until he took over as planner. Please tell me how that one quotation mark style breaks a law, rule, ordinance, etc. Better yet, tell me how this is protecting the public or promoting the orderly growth of the city (assuming that's the planner's job)... but you can't. Some of these flavor-of-the-week bureaucrats need to feel important sometimes.
Oh, and PS - I found a few recorded plats by one of our competitors in that same city that uses the exact same font and "backwards" quotation mark, but he allowed it on all those plats. That competitor is also the city engineer... Imagine that!
Didn't have such problems back in the day of hand drafting. Ten seconds with an electric eraser and a new quotation mark drawn in. Fixing REAL problems was a completely different problem way back then.
I'd probably take it as a compliment if that was the only thing he found. In my mind some people in his position are programmed to think they HAVE to find something. It's probably an indication of their personal insecurities about their function; afraid to approve something without requiring a change of SOMETHING.
When I was with a highway contractor we would have a "final inspection" at the end of a project. This was the ultimate moment the State's inspectors had to admit the project was complete. And from then on the contractor bore no more responsibility (other than contractual maintenance bonding). For some reason a lot of folks think if they don't find something to pick apart they're not doing their job.
The simple answer was to GIVE them something to find. My favorite was to have one of the crews leave a pile of palates, busted barricades, concrete slobber or trash where it looked like it was attempted to be being hidden. This seemed to checked all the boxes for the inspectors who were programmed to look for "gotchas".
Of course I'd complain about having to send men and equipment back out to clean up an area. They liked it when it seemed like trouble or it "hurt".
Don't take it personal. It's a game played with someone that feels the need to justify their own existence. From now on make sure there's backwards quotation marks somewhere every time you turn something in for his review.
Nothing personal really I just thought it was ludicrous to point out and was just sharing. One time after I submitted something to one city I noticed an errant leader just sitting off to the side, at the time I shared an office with my supervisor, when I made my "oops" exclamation Was moore then OOPS, I hate making silly mistakes like that), he said "well, you gave Ron something to comment on and he won't have to look any further." On a different project this same I was conversing through email with Ron about something, and he said something along the line of "I know I don't have to scrutinize your work too much, you've got this subdivision stuff down"
@paden-cash Giving them something to obviously redline or an open box on their checklist was a strategy at two totally different engineers that I have worked for. They must teach that at engineer’s school.
I read a similar comment on a surveyor's message board, back in the day. There was a response from someone claiming to be a reviewer: When I see an obvious error, like a missing or rotated north arrow, or similar, I take that as a reason to go over the entire document with a fine tooth comb.
If the municipality is charging for their review by the hour, then it's a good idea to play nice.
But I agree; if you try to provide a submittal that is perfect and they tell you that they don't like your quotation mark and you need to rotate it. They can go pound sand...
Ask him to give you a typed example of what he wants. Maybe then the bells will go off in his head.
I emailed this to them:
Hello xxxxxxxxx, hope all is well with you. I would like to thank you for the compliment to the completeness of my efforts to accomplish my clients goal in a most expeditious manner. I can think of no better compliment to my work than when I receive comments such as this:
[screen shot of comment]
In my vast experience, doing Land Surveying and Civil Design work in several states and submitting plats and design plans to many city planning departments, comments like this show me that my work conforms to the regulations by such a degree that you really had to look hard for something to comment about.
That being said, I know of no way to “adjust” the quotation mark, short of using a different font altogether, which is one of our company standard fonts and the same font that we have used for submittals to multiple cities and even prior submittals to the City of XXXXXXXX without comment.
How would you like me to address this comment.
Thank you
The response:
Hi Richard,
If you can’t adjust the quotation, that’s fine. A detail like that will not hold you up from moving forward, it was just something I noticed as I was reviewing your plat and figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask since there were other comments.
Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else,
By the way those other comments were all graphic things like moving paragraphs around in the dedication, nothing technical.
Try technobold font, it make the marks straight, some others do also. I might start using it.
You do know the first quotation mark used in a quote that the fat part is down and similarly the ending one is up.
Dumb question. Can you just get rid of quotation marks?
If you can't find a font that makes the quotation marks vertical just use two apostrophes.
they want the title of the plat in the dedication statement, so it's quoted, I suppose it could be underlined like any title
