I have no issues creating a file called `Release-Notes---0.40.md` on my computer (Win 8.1), and I doubt it would make Git choke either (since, at a basic level, it does the same thing). In my programming, I've replaced colons and other not-allowed characters with dashes, even having multiple dashes as the file above, and it has been fine. Yes, the dashes are awkward, but they are not usually at all troublesome.