Chad Perrin wrote:
I suppose I should go look at the bugzilla discussion now. I seem to
recall, last time I looked at it, that the endash people were advocating
for -- being translated to endashes and --- to emdashes, which seems
counterintuitive for both, since endashes are supposed to be shorter
than - and emdashes have been represented as -- for so long and in so
many contexts that using three dashes will just confuse the heck out of
many. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
Wot? En dashes are, by definition, one en long. Hyphens are usually
shorter.
Compare:
- hyphen
– en dash
— em dash
The difference may be minor if you're reading this in a monospaced font,
but both dashes should still be noticeably longer than the hyphen.
Using -- for en and --- for em dashes seems reasonable to me (that's how
TeX does it, IIRC), thought I'd be willing to live with – and --.
However, I do believe other languages (German?) tend to use the en
dash more than English.
--
Ilmari Karonen