quoted:

– General Punctuation –

ENTITY ensp CDATA “ ”—en space, U+2002 ISOpub –

ENTITY emsp CDATA “ ”—em space, U+2003 ISOpub –

ENTITY thinsp CDATA “ ”—thin space, U+2009 ISOpub –

…

ENTITY ndash CDATA “–”—en dash, U+2013 ISOpub –

ENTITY mdash CDATA “—”—em dash, U+2014 ISOpub –

quoted:

<!– General Punctuation –>

<!ENTITY ensp CDATA “ ”—en space, U+2002 ISOpub –>

<!ENTITY emsp CDATA “ ”—em space, U+2003 ISOpub –>

<!ENTITY thinsp CDATA “ ”—thin space, U+2009 ISOpub –>

…

<!ENTITY ndash CDATA “–”—en dash, U+2013 ISOpub –>

<!ENTITY mdash CDATA “—”—em dash, U+2014 ISOpub –>

This is right under the entry for em and en spaces.

It worked on FireFox 1.5.0.1 but I’ve not tried any other browser.

First, it’s perhaps wrong to say that there’s little use for the soft hyphen. I’d be very keen to use a soft-hyphen along with smart, automated hyphenation in a Web browser to achieve aesthetically pleasing right-rag effects with bodies of type. That’s something that has been lost entirely online.

Second, I think Hugh really outlines the use of the em dash very well; my personal taste is that an em dash deserves a space before and after, especially in browsers, in order to avoid effectively joining two long words together with an extra long dash and causing egregiously awkward right-rag effects. That said, I wish I could specify a shorter distance than a full space, as that amount does look odd. But it’s an acceptable compromise, at least for now.

Also their are some content managment systems which convert these automatically but I honestly couldn’t remember all the html code for them, and I simply am to lazy to bother.

5.2.1 Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases.

The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed by many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.

The web being my native design medium, I did some experimenting with browser support for various dashes and spaces. I hope this is useful to someone.

I agree with Paul Haine that the article on A List Apart is another fine resource. Your article is nice and easy to digest, I think in large part due to the rulemark gifs that quickly and clearly identify the content of each section. Great use of visuals.

Two gripes I have regarding the way web browsers handle these dandy punctuation marks: first, it’s a shame firefox still doesn’t recognize the soft hyphen (­)?really, it’s a shame that no browsers have the ability to break words between syllables the way a decent text processor can; second, in a number of browser fonts, including the ones this page displays in on both firefox and ie, one can barely distinguish between the hyphen and the en dash?if anything, the hyphen is actually wider.

There are quite a few different dashes, such as the figure dash for example, which I purposefully left out of this article because, well, it would become very complicated, very quickly.

You raised some really interesting points though.

Hyphens are used to hyphenate words and separate phone numbers. They should never be used as dashes. A dash, more specifically, an em dash, is a form of punctuation used to offset clauses in a sentence.

An en dash is typically half the length of an em dash (sometimes slightly wider than half, depending on the typeface) but still longer than a hyphen. En dashes are primarily used to denote duration, as in 8:00?5:00, or August 12?14, or Aardvark?Adelaide. Some people use them to separate phone numbers, but I think they are too large and look awkward for this.

The period is preferable to the space, but this is purely a matter of personal taste. Phone numbers separated by spaces are quite common in Europe, less so in the U.S.

When creating em and en dashes, you can add space before and after the dash, or not. I prefer to add either a small amount of space (usually via the application?s kerning commands), or no space at all. Page layout programs such as Adobe PageMaker and QuarkXPress let you adjust space between characters at a micro level (i.e., kerning), as do illustration programs such as Illustrator and FreeHand, but many word processors are limited in this regard and only allow you to add space via the Space Bar. The normal space created with the Space Bar seems a bit too wide for my tastes, but you may find it acceptable. Generally speaking, the wider the column of text, the more space you can insert before and after dashes (up to a full space). In a typical word processed documentsuch as a memo or letter, for example, where your column width might be as great as 5 or 6 inches, inserting a normal space before and after a dash looks just fine. But in a documentwith narrower columns, say a newsletter with three columns of text, this much space will stand out, and your dashes will resemble diving boards. In this case, I would suggest adding no space at all, and simply use the program?s kerning commands (if available) to tweak the space as necessary.

In PageMaker, press the Cmd key in conjunction with the Left and Right Arrow keys to decrease and increase kerning (the amount of space between characters) respectively. Hold down the Shift and Cmd keys if you want to increase or decrease kerning in smaller units. In QuarkXPress, press Cmd-Shift in conjunction with the Left and Right Bracket keys to kern text. Hold down the Cmd, Shift, and Option keys if you want to kern in smaller units. In PageMaker, a value of about 0.1 should suffice; in QuarkXPress, consider a value of about 20 before and after a dash.

If you do add a full space by pressing the Space Bar, it is important to add it before and after the dash. Sometimes people will add a space after a dash to break a line. Then, if they edit the text or change the layout, the dash with a space after it but no space before will appear rather awkward looking.

To create an em dash in most Mac applications, press Shift-Option-hyphen. To create an en dash, press Option-hyphen.

To create an em dash in most Windows applications, press Alt-0151. To create an en dash, press Alt-0150.

Some expert font sets contain a three-quarter em dash, but in reality, most em dashes are about this wide anyway. That is, most em dashes are not one em in width, and depend on the individual typeface. The three-quarter em dash can be substituted for the em dash. The two are interchangeable. But it is too wide to be used when you would normally use an en dash.

It is also acceptable to use an en dash instead of an em dash to set off clauses in text. I don?t like the practice, but it?s not incorrect to do so. If you do substitute en dashes, consider adding space before and after them.

Keep up the good work —-