I’m looking at columns like the classic today about cheek implants
When I see hyphens (or are they dashes?) like in the last paragraph there, they show up with a gray box around them.
What’s up with that?
I see it too, seems to have something to do with the CSS code. If you view the page source the gray-background hyphens look like this:
<p class=“answer”>One word of warning <span style=“background-color: #dddddd;”>— </span>a full-scale job of cheek rebuilding could cost you five grand.
For some reason instead of just being a hyphen, the hyphens are in a little CSS area defined to have a background color.
The columns have been in various different formats over the years as the Straight Dope moved from newspaper column to book to AOL to this website and the subsequent upgrades/redevelopments on this site.
Sometimes trash characters and odd pieces of formatting show up. I usually get them all but I missed that last one, sorry. Fixed now.