Then just to add to the mess, there’s the quotation dash U+2015 (8213) that is thicker than an em dash U+2014 (8212).
I’m pretty sure every version of MS Word I’ve ever used (20+ years and counting) has auto-replaced “word space hyphen space word” with “word space em-dash space word”. But reading this thread, that may be a Britishism. Not that Word is particularly good at mastering most other Britishisms, in my experience.
When typing on this message board I type the same sequence and just get a hyphen - I don’t really see the problem with this, I can’t think of an instance where this would cause confusion.
And board software eliminates it anyway. One space. Two spaces. Look the same?
Or:
Testing. The previous sentence had one space after the period.
Testing. The previous sentence had two spaces after the period.
Sorry. I had a comma between ‘dash’ and ‘which’ that clarified the sentence. I tend to overuse commas so, at the last moment I arbitrarily removed that comma. :smack: Culpa mea est.
If you reread #1 you’ll see I don’t rank space-hyphen-space at the bottom of the list of dash substitutes, though space-hyphen-hyphen-space is better. As you say, it should cause no confusion.
What is truly detestable is the single hyphen without the spaces. One starts off thinking a hyphen is intended. Yes, one often then recovers within a second, but meanwhile one gets shivers like one gets from the screeching sound of squeaky chalk on a blackboard. I’m asking Dopers to take pity!
The hyphen is used to join two half-words, as in this sentence. The dash is used to separate two thoughts — thus its purpose is opposite to the hyphen. I hope this comparison helps Dopers see why the improper use of hyphen is so annoying.
Y--------------------------------------------------A--------------------------------------------------R--------------------------------------------------D--------------------------------------------------
Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention above for the always exciting 100 dash yard.
People with the “All you have to do is hit this magic combination of keys …” mentality miss the bigger issue.
First, it’s different for various types of devices. So it’s not one set of magic keys.
Secondly, you’re limiting the thinking to just the dash-world. There are thousands of “proper” characters that people would theoretically have to learn the magic keys of to pass muster with the nit-pickers. That just isn’t at all a reasonable suggestion to offer.
And then you’re ignoring spacing. Not just one or two spaces here and there, but variable width spacing. Kerning. And on and on. The number of details in doing things “right” is astonishing. Egad, some people get POed if they see chunks of space in alignment on consecutive lines!
Unless you are in a serious publishing position, get real and take a chill pill.
I do publishing, layout and graphics all day long and sweat the details.
I do not lose it if I find a hyphen in a date range in a Word document or web page.
Actually no, board software has nothing to do with it.
The HTML rendering standard says multiple adjacent ordinary space characters in the HTML stream are to be displayed as just one. There are special non-coalescing space characters that can be used to force browsers to display multiple spaces as entered.
In my quoting you above the difference between one and two spaces is very clear inside the text box where I’m typing this now. But the difference is invisible in the area where the browser is displaying the text of my quote of you. The browser is mashing the multiple spaces together, not vBulletin.
If you don’t believe me, click
[Quote]
on this post and look at what you see :).
I should have led with this:
The hyphen is used to join two half-words, as in this sentence. The dash is used to separate two thoughts — thus its purpose is opposite to the hyphen.
The nature of dash and hyphen are opposite. Their respective natures are reflected in the “looks” they give to the words on the printed page.
Thus my quibble is not so trite as preferring one quotation mark over another, or worrying about the miniscule differences among minus, en-dash and hyphen.
Seems to me the critical visual difference is whether the horizontal line is set off with spaces or not. So this ought to work well enough:
The hyphen is used to join two half-words, as in this sentence. The dash is used to separate two thoughts - thus its purpose is opposite to the hyphen.Although this would be even better:
The hyphen is used to join two half-words, as in this sentence. The dash is used to separate two thoughts – thus its purpose is opposite to the hyphen.
Oh, dash it all and bring on the ellipses!
Why do I need a mnemonic for something I’ve been doing right all along?
Replacing the quote tags with code tags:
The browser is mashing the multiple spaces together, not vBulletin.
The code tags are vBulletin. Is it too complicated for this thread to ask how the code tags overrule the browser’s efforts to mash the spaces together?
I sentence you to a total ellipse of the heart. 
When trying to race through a sentence, dashes are often more like hurdles.
So, ellipses… three dots or four at the end of a sentence?
(Three, of course, in all instances. This isn’t 1893 any more.)
Using “view source” to see the raw HTML of the page is informative. *If *one can read HTML. If not, here’s the high points:
The
tag does several things. It sets a monospace = non-proportional font, special margins, etc. But the critical difference here is that it also encloses the verbatim body text inside a set of HTML [noparse]<pre> </pre>[/noparse] tags. Which has the effect of telling the browser to display everything inside the tag exactly as transmitted. Including showing every adjacent space and without wordwrapping. See https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_pre.asp for more on the [noparse]<pre>[/noparse] tag.There are three signs, the hyphen (very short), the en-dash, and the em-dash. In TeX (including LaTeX) they are called using -, --, and —, respectively. Except in math-mode, where - gets you a minus sign—essentially an en-dash. In fact you have to do something special to get a hyphen inside a math formula. Outside of math mode, the en-dash is used mostly for ranges, e.g., a reference to pp. 45–47.
This.
That said, I believe there is room for such an improvement to the standard computer keyboard (QWERTY keyboard, that is). On the number pad, for instance, to the “northeast” of the “9,” we find the “minus” sign, which is reiterated on the main keyboard immediately to the right of the “0.” The Shifted version of this key is the “underscore” key (as an aside, is the “minus” sign a hyphen or an en-dash?).
Let the “minus” sign key be the hyphen, and the key to the right of the “0” key be used for en-dashes and em-dashes.
What are we to do when we want to use an underscore key? Easy. Ctrl + U to activate the underline mode, then hit the spacebar. The “underscore” key as it stands is misnamed, anyway; you can’t actually underscore anything with it except spaces.
I’m sure there will be some naysayers who will object that Ctrl + U is not universally a code to activate an underline mode. To that objection, I say “get with the program.”
A tangential question: how were these issues managed before the invention of the printing press?