An FRL reader sent me a message yesterday politely chiding me for using hyphens in place of dashes. Gentle Reader is correct, but please let me whine: it’s not my fault.
The irony is that few things peeve me more–with the possible exception of its/it’s confusion–than hyphens used in lieu of dashes. And in that previous sentence, from inside the editor, I typed a dash as I have done for years, using two hyphens. It is the presentation that is mangled, not the author, I assume by some devil coding lurking within the theme.
The suggestion that I use the HTML code for the dash would require I not use the visual editor, and there’s a reason it’s called the visual editor: so I can write rather than code. Miss FRL’s brain does not care to pick nails out of horseshoes every few yards.
Associated Press tells me to place spaces around the dash — let me try that — but if that doesn’t work, I may need some help. From this end it appears to make a difference, but in any event, if I type two hyphens in a row, I mean two hyphens, not one, and I don’t need my decision overridden by a piece of software.
Regardless, I agree: hyphens are not dashes, and shame on WordPress, or this theme, or Satan, for mucking with good punctuation. If you don’t feel passionate about that, my apologies, but my Gentle Reader is correct to be irked, and I appreciate that he raised the issue.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Slowly winding down from a great conference - 2009
- The Blog for the COO Subcommittee on Watchamajigger - 2006
- ALA Annual: My Schedule - 2006
- Yet More Wedding Pix - 2004
Karen, in one of my more experimental moods (I know, odd for a Boomer) I discovered that even in the visual editor I can type the numeric entity (or named entity) for a dash, amongst other character entities. Upon saving they are converted to the correct character.
It kind of sucks to have to know (or have a good reference at hand) character references, but I use a couple character a lot and there are always (author) names that I’d like to be respectful of and use correctly accented characters.
Anyway, do what’s good for you, but on the rare occasion you need a (correctly encoded) character other than those immediately at hand on an English keyboard try entering it in the visual editor and saving. I was very pleasantly surprised.
I like WordPress, but it has much bigger issues than dashes and hyphens.
In my last job minus one, where we did not have a visual editor for our web content (which was our central work product), I routinely typed entities (numeric, at that; I had a slew memorized). But in a long piece it breaks the flow to do so, even if you don’t have to look them up (can there be anything kludgier than typing six characters instead of one?). It’s like fiddling with a leaky pen. Maybe you can write that way, but I can’t; the mechanics get in the way.
No. WordPress should support real English, and not rewrite what I write.
I was just getting irked about the same thing the other day, and I’m glad to know I’m not alone. I tried very hard not to use any dashes in this comment, though I was mightily tempted. Grr.
Well, the good news is that WP does properly insert an em dash when following AP style (as you’ve clearly learned by now). The problem is that Chicago seems to indicate the reverse: no spaces around the dash, which is also the style that I prefer. (Actually, Chicago is silent on spaces around an em dash in the section on punctuation, but table 4.14 [math symbols] indicates that there should be no spaces.)
My point is that no matter what the style books say (and I know what AP says; I am the one who decreed its use at FPOW Minus One), if I type two hyphens I want to see either two hypens or a dash. Not one hyphen. Nor should I have to do something Right, or type special characters; two hyphens is two hyphens and that is all there is to that. WP shouldn’t play style cop. Computers work for us, not vice-versa. grrrrrrrrrr (in rabid dachsund mode…)
You’re absolutely right. This is a case of “Bad Programmer! No Doughnut!”
But WordPress is free and you have access to the source, so you can just fix it.
Or you can check whether someone’s scratched the itch for you already. A quick check of the WP plugins database turned up Em Dasher, which turns two hyphens into an em dash.
I used to work with the Persnicketiest Typesetter on Earth. Even in Chicago style, he insisted on putting hair spaces around em dashes.
Free like an illiterate kitten!
Thanks much, Dorothea. That sort of works around the problem, but it’s strange to fix something that they broke in the first place. “Look, I put a nail in your tire, now I’m going to give you a tool so you can patch it!”
I had to go hunting for the difference between a hyphen and a dash. Little did I know that there is a whole Wikipedia article on the topic. I will never look at typographical horizontal lines the same way again. 🙂
With apologies to anyone offended by my use of [space] — [space] …
Peter, your use of space dash space is absolutely correct, at least according to AP rules, which are excellent for online writing (as you can see, I am compulsive on this topic). I’m wrong to not leave spaces around dashes… it’s bad habit, not good practice. But I’m right that WordPress shouldn’t convert two hyphens to one hyphen. Imagine if it did that to the letter “e”: chese, freze, breze… oh Peter, you are so swet!
What bothers me the most is that most people don’t know the difference between a hyphen and a dash. I checked out that Wikipedia article on the topic mentioned above, and it’s too complicated.
Patricia, I’m sure that’s why WP bungles the double-hyphen dash; it’s the tragic confluence of assumptions and confusion.
But wait. One of the things WP is doing (when you put spaces around them) is turning your two hyphens into an actual em-dash instead.
Is this not a valuable service? When most people don’t necessarily have any easy way that they know about to type em-dashes from their keyboard at all. I think it is in fact a valuable service, so I take issue with your claim that WP ought to simply put exactly what you type on the screen, the end, no exceptions. (It also nicely changes my straight quotes to properly aligned curly quotes, which I also appreciate).
The problem is in it’s logic for trying to take what was entered with our tragically limited keyboard and convert it to actual proper type, it made some wrong assumptions.
Perhaps it ought to be configurable, turn it on or off. Perhaps we ought to agitate until all our keyboards come with an em-dash and an en-dash key, in addition to a hyphen key. Oh, and a left and right quote mark key.
PS: My guess is it’s changing your two hyphens to an en-dash, not to one hyphen. Still an odd thing to do.
And my guess is that you ALREADY have the plug-in Dorothea mentions installed, or why would it be munging your hyphens in the first place?
Straight quotes to curly quotes, fine. Two hyphens to something else entirely, not fine. Silent corrections to things that are wrong, not fine. Chance to control one’s UI: priceless.
I checked my plugins, in case in a sleepwalking moment I downloaded, extracted, reviewed, uploaded, activated, and configured a plugin I had never heard of until yesterday, but to my relief this was not the case. It’s possible this is happening within another plugin, or (I’m betting, anyway) that the theme’s CSS is driving this.
n.b. I just checked the source code of this page, and indeed, something is changing two hyphens to #8211; or the en-dash (view the code and search for the word “peeve”).
I never knew we even needed such a thing as an en-dash. *I* certainly don’t need an en-dash.
As many of you probably know, in MS Word, two hyphens between words (no surrounding spaces) are automatically converted to an em dash. On the other hand, one (or two) hyphens between words surrounded by spaces is converted to an en dash. If you don’t like the resulting spacing, you may add spaces to the former or delete them from the latter.
From your main post, I gather that you have always been using two hyphens (no spaces) to create a dash here. Above you experimented with two hyphens (with spaces). The resulting punctuation is an en dash (no spaces) and an em dash (with spaces), respectively. The former is particularly counter-intuitive. I had always thought those little marks in your posts were hyphens, but now, on closer examination, I realize they are definitely en dashes! En dashes can be useful, but, as you know, should be used sparingly.
I fully understand why you do not want to get into using character entities (even the name is a turn-off). But now you have a good solution. When you really want a dash, use the [space] dash dash [space] combo, and you will have an AP-style em dash.
I personally prefer the no-spaces style, but I agree with you that it should be predictable.
Just FYI — a plug-in for WordPress was released last week that will “help prettify your web typography by preventing ugly quotes and widows and providing CSS hooks to style some special cases.” It doesn’t appear to handle hyphens versus dashes, but perhaps an enhancement request to the author would be in order.
For those of you who are having difficulty differentiating between hyphens and em dashes, see this simple explanation:
Hyphen and Ems
It’s really not that difficult. They–hyphens and em dashes–should not be padded with spaces; doing so might make your copy look a little dog-eared;)
Johno, Associated Press style guidelines require spaces around em dashes; perhaps those guidelines are based on disambiguating dashes versus hyphens.
Peter, I want to find out where the error lies, and address that problem. Even if WordPress isn’t a pig, it doesn’t need lipstick. 😉
I feel I should point out that WordPress converts three consecutive non–space-surrounded hyphens—like this—into an em-dash.
Josh: interesting point! Thank you.