On 19/07/13 04:46, Serhiy Storchaka wrote:
18.07.13 20:48, Guido van Rossum написав(ла):
I believe there are only a few places where en-dashes should be used,
for most things you should use either em-dash or hyphen. Consult your
trusted typography source (for US English, please, punctuation
preferences vary by locale). E.g. Google for "em dash en dash".
Currently Python documentation in most cases uses en-dashes. Should we replace
them to em-dashes? Should we remove spaces around dashes?
Or we should replace a half-dozen of em-dashes found in Python documentation to
en-dashes?
I believe all hypens used in place of dash should be replaced to dash (but to
en- or em- dash?) in any case.
It depends on the context, and I don't believe you could completely automate
the process (at least not without using something that understands natural
language, like NLTK, and probably not even then). I think it will require a
human reader to review them, like any other style and grammar edit.
Wikipedia has a good overview which mostly agrees with my typesetting and style
books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
Hyphens are commonly used for compound words, although in practice hyphenated words gradually lose the
hyphen. E.g. we usually write "inbox" rather than "in-box", although we still write
"in-tray". Hyphens are also used at the end of the line to break a word to the next line.
En-dashes are used for durations and ranges (sometimes with a thin space on either side,
otherwise a regular space can be used). E.g. "October–December".
En-dash is also used when making a compound word from words which themselves are compound words, e.g. "The
pre–World War II economy" joins "pre-" with "World War II", not just "World".
Em-dashes are used for parenthetical asides, or to indicate a break in speech
or thought. They are often used when a comma is too weak and a period is too
strong—a bit like a colon.
Different sources give different recommendations regarding spaces around
dashes. The Chicago Manual of Style agrees with most British sources that
em-dashes should never have spaces around them, but the New York Times style
guide sets hair-spaces around them. Unusually for me, I tend to agree with the
NY Times on this one. A regular space is usually too wide.
Many of these conventions are style conventions, rather than strictly grammatical. For example,
although English grammar says we can use an en-dash to make ranges of numbers, the SI standard
recommends against expressions like "10–50 volts" since it can be mistaken for
subtraction, and recommends "10 to 50 volts".
Optimistically, I think it would probably be safe[1] to replace " -- " or " --- " in text
with "\N{THIN SPACE}\N{EM DASH}\N{THIN SPACE}" (or \N{HAIR SPACE} if you prefer) without human
review, but for any other changes, I wouldn't even try to automate it.
[1] Famous last words.
--
Steven
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