Timeline for Is it acceptable to use a single hyphen as a dash (as the BBC does)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 27, 2016 at 15:24 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @ErikHumphrey I beg your pardon? | |
| Sep 27, 2016 at 15:23 | comment | added | Erik Humphrey | @tchrist The example given is objectively a hyphen. | |
| Jun 14, 2015 at 20:48 | comment | added | Oleksandr R. | In my opinion you are too charitable to the BBC here. Nobody else suggests that this is a reasonable thing to do, and (to me) their apparent ignorance of the difference between a hyphen and and the various kinds of dashes suggests actual ignorance of that subject. The BBC is not a literary organization, after all. Inconsistency between "e.g." and the wildly incorrect "eg" and the inclusion of disgusting colloquialisms like "capped up" for "capitalized" in their own style guide are further examples of this. | |
| Jan 26, 2015 at 0:38 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | The main difference is that spaced en dashes are preferred in the UK, whereas em dashes (usually unspaced, alas) are preferred in the US. When your only key is a ‘-’, it gets used for hyphens, dashes, and minuses, and which one it is depends on the way it is used. | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 15:03 | comment | added | hunterhogan | It is possible that I overreached. I would have been more precise if I had written,"...what American editors would call..." or "what American law review editors would call...". I honestly cannot recall what I was taught about hyphen and dash when I took "keyboarding" class on manual typewriters 24 years ago. It seems we agree on at least one thing: despite strong consensus in US usage, at least some British have different conventions. | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 14:04 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | No, that is not "what an American would call a hyphen". It is a dash. The difference is functional, and it certainly is functioning as a dash no matter what code point is used. Since people who type on an old-fashionened manual typewriter cannot distinguish between lengths, it is up to software to convert them into the right code point. But the difference between a hyphen and a dash – and for that matter, a minus – lies in what they are doing, not what they look like, for what they look like varies greatly. Spaced en dashes are standard in British publishing. That doesn’t make them hyphens. | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 5:59 | history | answered | hunterhogan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |