On 2006-10-18, "A.J.Mechelynck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Benji Fisher wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 01:21:31AM +0200, A.J.Mechelynck wrote:
> >> 1. Em dashes should normally be set apart from the neighbouring words by
> >> blank spaces -- like this -- and if they are, they won't be mistaken for
> >> part of a word regardless of whether 'iskeyword' includes the dash.
> > [snip]
> >
> > That depends on your style manual. The one I read, back in my
> > typewriter days, insisted on dashes without spaces on either side--like
> > this.
> Oh? Apparently styles differ. All em dashes that I remember seeing in
> printed books had spaces around them; but that's mostly in French (where
> the em dash is used not only as a kind of "super-parenthese" but also to
> mark change of locutor in direct speech) and in Russian (where it can
> replace the nonexistent present tense of the verb "to be"). I think it's
> rarer in English.
I was about to make the same comment as Benji when I saw his. While
searching for a reference, I came across this:
Hyphens and dashes: a closer look at English usage
...
"both European and Anglo saxon typesetters do in fact separate
words by close to a full em length in this situation, but the
European style is to leave a bit of white space around the
(shorter) dash while the Anglo saxon style is to cover the full
em length with a correspondingly longer dash instead."
(http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html)
Regards,
Gary
--
Gary Johnson | Agilent Technologies
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Wireless Division
| Spokane, Washington, USA
