Re: [O] emdash and endash

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On Mon, Apr 18 2011, Samuel Wales wrote:

> On 2011-04-17, Ben Finney <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I think not. I see many (non-Org) ASCII documents that distinguish a
>> notional em dash from en dash by different number of hyphens, as in your
>> first list.
>
> Like this---really?  Or --- this?  It does look, however, as if people
> use different standards.  I am not suggesting that the default be
> changed.
>
>> “Consistent with ASCII”? ASCII has neither en dash nor em dash, so it's
>> not ASCII that you're wanting to be consistent with. You're referring to
>> conventions that attempt to preserve Unicode characters in ASCII.
>
> Quite right.  Of course, some conventions -- this one included
> (or--arguably uglier but many favor it--this one) -- began before
> Unicode.

A very minor two cents…

I think this springs much earlier typographical conventions: the
grammatical dash is sometimes represented by an en-dash with spaces on
either side, and sometimes by an em-dash with no spaces. Perhaps a US/UK
thing? But I don't think that anyone uses an em-dash with spaces on
either side, and I think the convention of two ASCII dashes standing for
an en-dash (and three for em-) probably still makes the most sense…