On Mon, Apr 18 2011, Samuel Wales wrote: > On 2011-04-17, Ben Finney <ben+em...@benfinney.id.au> 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…
