Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dashes archive 1

message: Ever since I read the informative (and nit-picky, just my style) Dash (punctuation) article, I've been cheerfully using typographically correct dashes in my edits. And seeing as I can easily enter them as a single character, I've done so. Same goes for curly quotes, apostrophes, etc.: I've been typing them in directly to edit boxes.
I've just discovered that in using these characters I am quite the shill for Microsoft  — the funny thing is, I'm editing with Firefox on a Mac! I suppose that technology has marched on, at least in some operating systems, allowing me to join in on the Windows party of using fancy punctuation marks that aren't part of the ISO-8859-1 standard. I recognize that this is wrong, since the English Wikipedia claims to use the ISO-8859-1 charset. Sorry.
Once you use edit this way, though, it's hard to go back. There's no need for ugly HTML code in the Wiki markup, just clean, correct typography. On a Mac you type in option key combos to get the symbols; on Windows you edit in Word and let it do its creepy thing, then copy and paste; on Linux, I don't know, you write a program or something. Anyway, it's better than the other options.
Of course, the problem is that the ISO-8859 charset does not have these characters. The solution is to move the English wikipedia to UTF-8, like the French and other language Wikipedias have recently done. At that point we can use almost any single-character symbol we want.
As far as size goes, all ASCII characters still only take up one byte when represented in UTF-8. Characters that are not in ASCII but are in ISO-8859-1, like é, take up 2 bytes instead of 1, but I think that would be balanced by the savings from dashes being a 2 byte code instead of 8 bytes of HTML markup, or two ugly bytes when represented as --. Non-European characters (used in interwiki links) would take up less space in UTF-8, too. So in the end it might be an overall space savings, if the conversion is thorough.
Thoughts? This change would probably take some community support, as it can't be much fun changing character sets on the largest Wikipedia. Nathan 17:08, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)
:I'll second your opinion.  Unicode (UTF8 is the easiest) is the way to go.  buckwad 03:38, 2004 Jun 11 (UTC)
::I used to enter special characters directly with my keyboard (Microsoft have released a free too that makes it possible to easily design your own keymap; I took the Spanish one and added a few extra characters), but people complained they couldn't view them, so I had to stop.  It would be so good if I could start again. — Chameleon 12:39, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK only Mozilla based browsers like Firefox convert charts not present in the given encoding to Unicode Entities --Hhielscher 09:22, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  UTF-8 can end this debate 

message: The Unicode Standard (v4.0) on page 155 in chap. 6 has the Quotation Dash (U+2015 / ―) to be called Horizontal Bar and gives Quotation Dash as an alternate name but officially refers to it as Horizontal Bar. Of course, calling it Horizontal Bar would conflict with the html tag <HR> which the resulting graphic people seem to want to call horizontal bar too, when it's really called a Horizontal Rule by the W3C standard.  So yeah...  Call U+2015 a quotation dash, a horizontal bar, or both? Keeping with the Unicode Standard for naming specific code characters would be best. Kevin Breitenstein 05:43, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotation Dash / Horizontal bar 

message: Just trying to list them to keep them straight.  If the automatic conversion is ever implemented, this will probably become a vote.
=== TEX and SmartyPants convention ===
* hyphen = “-” (one hyphen: “Ex-wife”)
* en dash = “--” (two hyphens: “1995--2004”)
* em dash = “---” (three hyphens: “em dashes---those beautiful things”)
* spaced en dash = “ -- ” (two hyphens surrounded by spaces: “November 1 -- December 26”)
* spaced em dash = “ --- ” (three hyphens surrounded by spaces: “em dashes --- those beautiful things”)
=== Textile convention ===
* hyphen = “-” (one hyphen with no spaces: “Ex-wife”)
* en dash = “ - ” (one hyphen surrounded by spaces: “1995 - 2004”)
* em dash = “--” (two hyphens: “em dashes--those beautiful things”)
* spaced en dash = ??? (can this be typeset at all using the Textile notation?)
* spaced em dash = “ -- ” (two hyphens surrounded by spaces: “em dashes -- those beautiful things”)
=== Nathan Hamblen's backwards convention ===
* hyphen = “-” (one hyphen with no spaces: “Ex-wife”)
* en dash = “---” (three hyphens: “1995---2004”)
* em dash = “--” (two hyphens: “em dashes--those beautiful things”)
* spaced en dash = “ --- ”? (three hyphens surrounded by spaces: “November 1 --- December 26”)
* spaced em dash = “ -- ”? (two hyphens surrounded by spaces: “em dashes -- those beautiful things”)
I believe that Textile and SmartyPants both allow you to reverse their behaviour by setting a preference.  I’m guessing TEX does too.  The typist’s convention going back many decades trumps the significance of these excellent software packages’ behaviours.  —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 15:04 Z
:: Michael, I edited your nice list to (a) correct a small error in the example for “en dash” in Nathan Hamblen’s backwards convention, (b) add entries for “spaced en dash” and “spaced em dash,” and (c) add some  tags to improve the formatting.  I hope you don’t mind. – Daniel Brockman 14:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is all moot since they can be entered directly into the markup now — like this.  I've got a javascript button that converts a bunch of types automatically. — Omegatron 02:04, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Various ASCII to HTML conventions 

message: * hyphen = “-” (one hyphen with no spaces: “Ex-wife”)
* en dash = “---” (three hyphens: “1995---2004”)
* em dash = “--” (two hyphens: “em dashes--those beautiful things”)
* spaced en dash = “ --- ”? (three hyphens surrounded by spaces: “November 1 --- December 26”)
* spaced em dash = “ -- ”? (two hyphens surrounded by spaces: “em dashes -- those beautiful things”)
I believe that Textile and SmartyPants both allow you to reverse their behaviour by setting a preference.  I’m guessing TEX does too.  The typist’s convention going back many decades trumps the significance of these excellent software packages’ behaviours.  —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 15:04 Z
:: Michael, I edited your nice list to (a) correct a small error in the example for “en dash” in Nathan Hamblen’s backwards convention, (b) add entries for “spaced en dash” and “spaced em dash,” and (c) add some  tags to improve the formatting.  I hope you don’t mind. – Daniel Brockman 14:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is all moot since they can be entered directly into the markup now — like this.  I've got a javascript button that converts a bunch of types automatically. — Omegatron 02:04, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1485#c20 Nathan Hamblen's backwards convention] 

message: Most of the bottom of this article (how to type em-dashes on various keyboards) is totally moot since anyone can just click the link below the edit box to add the em-dash. Any objections to me chopping it totally? It can always live at em dash or something. Stevage 22:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't.  Some people will want to type them in by hand instead of the edit thingy, which is slower. — Omegatron 19:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggest cutting moot point at bottom

message: I'm sure I can't say anything here that hasn't been said before, so please be patient with a new editor.
I know about the many styles people use for dashes.  I was hoping by coming to the manual of style I'd get some guidance about the preferred style on Wikipedia.  My understanding—generally, not specific to Wikipedia—has been that the em dash without spaces (or with hair spaces) was the preferred style.  After reading the style manual here it seems like the answer is "whatever you want to type."
Also, having the guide tell editors not to change existing dash styles seems to go against WP:BB and will just result in ugly pages that use multiple dash styles.  It's OK not to require a particular dash style, but not even stating a preference is, in my opinion, a mistake. – Doug Bell talk•contrib 04:07, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No one can agree on it, so it sits in limbo for now.  :-\ — Omegatron 04:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with Doug Bell. My ideal policy would be that we always use proper em and en dashes, but I think mandating hyphens would be a better solution than "do what you like, but don't change anything". Can't this just be voted on once and for all? Surely Wikipedia has settled thornier issues than this... —Chowbok 22:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It should be "do what you like, but x is preferred.  don't revert if people change to x." — Omegatron 03:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. And as I've said elsewhere on this page, flush em dashes are the only style—short of inventing a nonstandard ‐ entity—with a prayer of automatically extracting semantic dashes if someone wanted to automatically convert Wikipedia to a different dash style. (PS: Is it a coincidence that this is the only Wikipedia discussion I've read in which all participants sign with a Unicode em dash? :-) ) —BenFrantzDale 04:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I second the agreement with Omegatron's recommended wording.  Do we really need a vote to determine what the preferred x style is?—it seems pretty obvious to me. (I've changed my signature from an en dash with spaces to an em dash with no spaces as a sign of support. :-) —Doug Bell talk•contrib 02:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I think Omegatron's solution is exactly right. It won't effect anybody who doesn't want to bother with correct dashes, but we'll gradually move to proper usage. And I don't see why x should be so hard to resolve. These aren't actually controversial issues in the publishing world (unlike disputes like, say, the serial comma or the possessive of singular words ending in "s"); em dashes break up sentences, en dashes signify ranges and are used for compound hyphenation. —Chowbok 02:42, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Why are unspaced better? — Omegatron 03:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  To appeal to authority, unspaced em dashes are the style used by CMS and by Strunk & White. —BenFrantzDale 05:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Sorry to rain on the parade, but I don't think 5 people is much of a consensus for the whole encyclopedia. I'd love to see an em-dash as preferred style for parenthetical clauses and similar breaking, but am very much against flush or hair spacing. Flush spacing, though common in print, is far from universal, and at Wikipedia seems to be in the minority of articles I've worked on (before tweaking them, that is). Hair spacing looks nice as displayed, but isn't worth the editing annoyance, especially when ordinary spaces look fine as well. — Jeff Q (talk) 02:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fine, let's ignore the spacing issue for now. Can we at least say that 1) it's okay to put in hyphens or em/en dashes; 2) it's okay to replace hyphens with em or en dashes, as appropriate; and 3) it's not okay to replace em or en dashes with hyphens? —Chowbok 04:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: * Support. Jeff Q (talk) 04:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: * Support.  (Seems like the sensible place to develop consensus on this is the dashes talk page, isn't it . . .) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:08, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

text: * Support, preferably with the addtion that changes from en dash to em dash or em dash to en dash are discourgaed. Jeltz talk 14:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How come? The usage of those is pretty well-established (unlike with spacing). —Chowbok 18:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well established? I have seen both en dashes and em dashes used in serious typograhy (news papers, books). I think we should ignore en vs. em for now since there is no well-established rule there that all of the typograhic world agree on. Jeltz talk 11:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, both should be used. Whether it's an em or an en depends on the usage. Can you give me an example of a book that uses one or the other contrary to the standards? —Chowbok 16:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, I feel like we might be talking about different things. What I'm talking about is that both en dashes and em dashes can be used for parentethical purposes, depnding on what you prefer. See Dash#En_dash_versus_em_dash for what I'm referring to. Jeltz talk 17:49, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

text: * Support, of course.  Ignore the spacing issue, and the en vs em issue for now.  (Of course, Mediawiki should just replace -- with — automatically.)  — Omegatron 15:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I personally prefer the LaTeX style where -- is replaced with – and --- is replaced with —. That way you can write both. Jeltz talk 11:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I used to argue for that style, too.  :-)  After creating the dash fixer, I realized that there is a vast number of double hyphens on Wikipedia already from people who learned it in typing class, and a few who just use a hyphen.  Might as well just go with what they already use.  (Besides, they'd just end up typing -- anyway, out of habit, getting an en dash, and leaving it that way; so we'd have ens everywhere we were supposed to have ems.)  It could still be possible to create both dashes, if we were smart with the implementation.  I tried to write up a Dash syntax summary, but never finished it. — Omegatron 11:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

text: * Support, also hyphen-minus to minus (in math context) but not the reverse, and mediawiki should automatically do double -- (but leave more than two hyphens alone). This is the first I (who thought myself a bit of a typography geek) learned that hyphen and m-dash were not equivalent. In the long run, I'd say that type-anything is necessary, but any hyphen-minus outside a PRE tag or equivalent should be ripe for replacement — to minus if math; to en-dash when that's clear or, in parenthetical case, for consistency or when there's any indication that the original author prefers it so; to em-dash for the same reasons or for double hyphens; and to en-dash or em-dash as preferred (or possibly just em-dash) in the parenthetical case when there is no reason to infer authorial preference. --Homunq 14:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * Support Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 15:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * Support —David Eppstein 16:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * Support Strad 17:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * Support —Ben FrantzDale 00:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should have a ''preferred'' dash style—really 

message: The  at the top of WP:MOSDASH
made navigation more difficult than necessary.
I've moved it to the bottom and filled out the
missing shortcut in Template:Style-guideline. 
- Omniplex 18:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meta: navigation 

message: The article states neither the figure dash ("‒") nor the quotation dash ("―") should be used in Wikipedia articles because browser support for them is lacking. Is that still true? Under Mac OS X 10.3.9 (2003) they are rendered correctly: not only in the current version of Safari, but also in a 2003 version of Camino (a Mozilla-based browser) and in a 2001 version of Internet Explorer. Ian Spackman 08:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As of 2005, the support of the UTF-8 end dash (–), em dash (—) and minus sign (−) in web browsers has been excellent and there is no reason not to use these characters in Wikipedia. Even VT100-terminal based text-mode browsers such as w3m or lynx haven't had problems with them for many years. I don't know whether the same can already be said for figure dash and quotation dash, which are missing in most commonly-covered Unicode subsets, including WGL4. Markus Kuhn 19:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dashes not used on Wikipedia 

message: A discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) has revealed an overwelming consensus (with, I think, only one editor disagreeing) for the use of en-rules for connecting birth and death dates.  As this is the universal English standard, is there a reason for not making it the Wikipedia standard?  Editors wouldn't of course (indeed, couldn't) be forced to use it, but I can't imagine why any editor would complain because a hyphen had been corrected to an en-rule. --Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 16:08, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Proposing to keep Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#n dash as central discussion place on this issue. --Francis Schonken 16:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That certainly seem to be the wisest approach. --Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 22:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth&ndash;death dates 

message: The character to the left of the emdash (—) on the special character list under the edit box (–) appears to be an ndash (–).  If this is correct, it would be helpful to have this fact added to Omegatron's bolded notice at the top of the article, for the benefit of casual skimmers of the page.  With the broad lack of consensus over the styles discussed on this page, I don't feel so bold as to make the change myself.  --Blainster 16:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Special character list