On 6/23/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 12:21:28PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
Would requiring spaces on either side of the double dash before converting it into an emdash improve the parsing behavior any?
Please don't.
<snob type=typography> Em dashes are properly set in English text without spacing on either side, though the ASCIIography of this usage is much less picky.
Can you provide a reference for this? Also can you be sure this is the only style and that it doesn't vary by style guide, by publisher, by country, by newspaper vs novels, etc. The reason I ask is that I've been studying casually how they are typeset in books as part of my thinking about an XML format for e-texts. I have seen so many cases both with and without spaces that I've been pondering whether it would best be handled as a style issue.
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
If someone decides that it needs to be " -- " that's mapped, at least take the spaces out when setting the glyph?
</snob>
Cheers,
-- jra
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?
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