Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!yale!Horne-Scott
From: Horne-Scott@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: em-dashes
Message-ID: <65736@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jul 89 17:56:35 GMT
References: <65590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Sender: root@yale.UUCP
Reply-To: Horne-Scott@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven, CT   06520-2158
Lines: 67
In-reply-to: leichter@CS.YALE.EDU (Jerry Leichter)

In article <65590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, leichter@CS (Jerry Leichter) writes:
> In article <1168@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>, jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright) writes...
> >In article <65479@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> leichter@CS.YALE.EDU (Jerry Leichter (LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)) writes:
> 
> One book on typography that I have handy (Brady's "Using Type Right") - says
> that in a well-designed font, an em-dash should have a built in "shoulder"
> to keep it from touching the adjoining letters.  This is not the case in some
> fonts; Brady advises that the compositor should add a thin space before and
> after in this case.

Yes, but the space generated by the space character in TeX is *much* too thick.

I've seen en dashes with surrounding spaces used as em dashes, but that's not
attractive, either.  Do it this way---and no other.

> BTW, the CMR em-dash is designed "correctly" according
> to this criterion.  On the other hand, the font used in the Chicago Manual
> of Style seems pretty marginal to me.  (In the 13th Edition, take a look at
> the first example in Section 5.83.)

Correct on both points.

> The rules on this sort of stuff can be pretty arbitrary.  For example, there
> seems to be universal agreement that an ellipsis should be treated as a word,
> with normal word spacing before and after.  Why the difference?  I'd have
> expected that, if anything, you could get away with LESS space around an
> ellipsis than around an em-dash, since you have some much white above and
> around those little dots to begin with.

An ellipsis causes more of a semantic break than an em dash.  It deserves
more space, but one may use less than word spacing around it.  Besides, the
length of the em dash makes the spaces around it unattractive.  This is why an
en dash looks better with surrounding spaces than an em dash (as mentioned
above).  (But I'm still not suggesting that you use an en dash between spaces
as an em dash.)

> One thing to keep in mind is that, for economic reasons, typographical con-
> ventions will usually be biased toward the smallest spacing possible, at
> least for running text.  (Headings and such are a different issue, but they
> have a lesser, (trivial for something like a book), influence on over-all
> text length.)

Yes, but that's not the reason here.

> Finally, I'll confess that I personally put spaces around CMR em-dashes.  I
> started off doing it without thinking - I just copied my normal ASCII conven-
> tions without realizing what I was doing.  Later, I started wondering, and
> checked some references.  (Curiously, I never noticed the line in the LaTeX-
> book before.)  When all was said and done, however, em-dashes with spaces
> around them just look cleaner and more open to me; em-dashes without spaces
> look crowded.

Then at least do this:

	I want to use an em dash~--- right here.

You don't want word spacing, anyway.  An ellipsis represents *words*; a dash
doesn't.  Why, then, should a dash be given so much space--and a varying
amount?  Try thin spaces.

					--Scott

Scott Horne                              Hacker-in-Chief, Yale CS Dept Facility
horne@cs.Yale.edu                         ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
Home: 203 789-0877     SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
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Dare I speak for the amorphous gallimaufry of intellectual thought called Yale?