A Word About Dashes
Over the years I've grown increasingly mystified by the universal ignorance surrounding the dash punctuation mark. I'm not talking about proper usage—people tend to have a decent ear for that—I'm talking about the actual typeset.
For the record: a dash is not a hyphen; a dash is not a hyphen preceded by a space, or succeeded by a space; a dash is not a hyphen flanked by spaces. No.
This is a dash—believe me.
Most word processors will automatically convert "example--example" to "example—example" when a space is keyed after the succeeding word. If you're using a program that doesn't, just remember, two hyphens are acceptable. As long as their edges touch each other and the words; there are no spaces involved with a dash!
In HTML code a dash is achieved using "& #8212;" (remove the space btwn/ ampersand and pound sign).
" -" no
"- " no
"-" no
" - " no
" — " no
"— " no
" —" no
"—" yes!
Glad we cleared that up.
(R Woerheide, Editor)
For the record: a dash is not a hyphen; a dash is not a hyphen preceded by a space, or succeeded by a space; a dash is not a hyphen flanked by spaces. No.
This is a dash—believe me.
Most word processors will automatically convert "example--example" to "example—example" when a space is keyed after the succeeding word. If you're using a program that doesn't, just remember, two hyphens are acceptable. As long as their edges touch each other and the words; there are no spaces involved with a dash!
In HTML code a dash is achieved using "& #8212;" (remove the space btwn/ ampersand and pound sign).
" -" no
"- " no
"-" no
" - " no
" — " no
"— " no
" —" no
"—" yes!
Glad we cleared that up.
(R Woerheide, Editor)
posted by Robert Woerheide at 3:26 PM
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3 Comments:
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The scary implication here—considering that the majority of prose submissions we receive contain such dash errors—is that so few "writers" apparently read! (No book I've ever read, or thumbed through for that matter, contains incorrect dash typesets.)
OK, so Rolling Stone puts spaces around their dashes. Someone should tell them to stop.
If you write as well as they, maybe I'll forgive you the error.
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