A dash is quite simply two hyphens joined together. Some fonts and programs seamlessly join the two hyphens; others do not.
It doesn’t. Mrs. Bloom works there and I asked. It does have a morgue, though.
About the dash, and whether it is two hyphens, or whatever, and other up thread comments. M-dashes and N-dashes are real things typographically/print-orthographically. About “dashes,” it’s trickier, since orthographically, at least, English–and common speech–isn’t clear. The previous sentence uses two M-dashes; this sentence uses an N-dash. A “dash,” in common orthographic usage, might also be be an ellipses of some sort. Up to the printer, I suppose, what to use and keep it standard.
Which is why copy-editors marking up by hand will use (perhaps confusingly in some contexts) a unique mark–the “=” sign when inserting or making clear an N-dash, or, if confronted with a typewritten “-” by its lonesome will decide to write a “1” over it and and an “N” under it.
As for conscientious typed indications in a mss., “–” with no spaces bracketing it is accepted as meaning “M-dash,” and a single “-” as “N-dash.”
If you’re dealing with a mss. submitted by Joyce with dialogue or poetry submitted by Emily Dickinson you’ve got a problem to work out with the author, besides being a very lucky person.
(Somewhere in SD there’s a nice thread on Joyce’s use of dashes instead of quotation marks in Ulysses.)
ETA: I was a hot-type typesetter in a Linotype shop back in the day.
ETA2: All the linotypers at the NYT used to be deaf or hard-of-hearing, and preferentially hired so. Cant’t imagine that now with labor laws. Interesting, right?
Sure there are—shift-option-dash on a Mac, since 1984. (for the em dash). Just option–dash for the en dash.
And some convoluted contortionist trick involving the Alt key and several consecutive pressed of keypad numerals if you’re on a Windows box will do it, too.
If we all stop looking at it, it will go away. It just wants your attention.
Mac:
hyphen -
en dash –
em dash —
Ligatures have klass: I can’t finance a flood.
The problem has been fixed. Retroactively. So, technically it never existed–there has always only been one period. Move along, overly inquisitive citizen…
If we’re going to argue over dashes vs en-dashes vs em-dsshes, it would help if someone would explain the expected difference in use.