Punctuation dash (em-dash) in English

[mbaer]

Hi all,

I just bumped into a problem with a long dash (this---that) and
hyphenation right after the dash (all happening in a quote
environment) resulting in the long dash followed immediately by a
hyphenation dash. Looks ugly. (I am using the slightly outdated
texlive on an Ubuntu 2008.10 system.)

Then I found this 2003 thread: <http://groups.google.com/group/
comp.text.tex/browse_thread/thread/7f4e2300db0da9fe/b4c3bbee529782b1?
lnk=gst&q=dash#b4c3bbee529782b1> and I thought why not just turning to
the suggestion made there by Paul Stanley: this\,---\,that.That would
remedy my problem and also look better than squeezing the dash right
at the words left and right.

What is the state of the art regarding em-dashes? I like the solution
with the small spaces.

Best
Matthias

[Will Robertson]

On 2009-02-20 10:02:27 +1030, mbaer <mb...@cs.tu-berlin.de> said:

> What is the state of the art regarding em-dashes? I like the solution
> with the small spaces.

Write a macro so that (a) you're consistent, and (b) so you can change
your mind.

There's a little bit about what I personally do here:
<http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/robertson/>

Will

P.S. Hyphenation after an em-dash sounds weird; I'm pretty sure that's
not supposed to happen.

[Mariano Suárez-Alvarez]

On Feb 20, 2:47 am, Will Robertson <wsp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2009-02-20 10:02:27 +1030, mbaer <mb...@cs.tu-berlin.de> said:
>
> > What is the state of the art regarding em-dashes? I like the solution
> > with the small spaces.
>
> Write a macro so that (a) you're consistent, and (b) so you can change
> your mind.
>
> There's a little bit about what I personally do here:
>   <http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/robertson/>

Nice. I had not seen that.

> P.S.  Hyphenation after an em-dash sounds weird; I'm pretty sure that's
> not supposed to happen.

and I'm pretty sure a \Eg is pretty much not supposed to
be used, either ;-)

-- m

[jon]

On Feb 19, 11:47 pm, Will Robertson <wsp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's a little bit about what I personally do here:
>   <http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/robertson/>

> P.S.  Hyphenation after an em-dash sounds weird; I'm pretty sure that's
> not supposed to happen.

sadly it does happen all too often if you over-use them like i do. (i
take it as a sign that i should cut back, but i like your macro-based
solution too---minus the thin spaces :)

cheers,
jon.

[Will Robertson]

On 2009-02-20 16:00:55 +1030, jon <jonwro...@gmail.com> said:

> but i like your macro-based
> solution too---minus the thin spaces :)

That's entirely a matter of the font, I think; hence the macro, so you
can customise how it looks!

Will

[mbaer]

On Feb 19, 11:47 pm, Will Robertson <wsp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There's a little bit about what I personally do here:
>   <http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/robertson/>
>

Thanks for sharing this. I like the idea of binding a macro to an
actual unicode em-dash. Looks pretty neat. I will probably go for the
em-dash with small spaces, for I always found the American convention
curious, anyway.

However, it is beyond me how I should get an em-dash typed into my
Eclipse editor, or any other text editor for that matter.

Matthias

[Mariano Suárez-Alvarez]

If you are in Linux using X, you need to locate the
Compose key of your keyboard: then you just hit

Compose minus minus minus

and you get one.

-- m

[mbaer]

Just a brief follow-up, lest this gets lost. The NYTimes apparently
uses en-dashes and full space instead of em-dashes and zero space. I,
for one, will stick with em-dashes and small spaces.