That long line, – or — or ...

[Philipp Lenssen]

I don't know the English word, but I'm referring to the double-dash
which is used to separate parts of a sentence. I'm using — so far.
Now I saw – which is slightly shorter. Some sites use --.

Is there anything I should know to make a good decision on which to use,
other than what looks best? I think the W3C validator is always handing
out errors, even when I go through the different charsets.

I remember a time when the W3C validator would validate my sites even
though it warned me about the charset... these days, it refuses to do
anything. I don't really control the HTTP charset send in the header.
And I never use meta definitions...

[Andreas Prilop]

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Philipp Lenssen wrote:

OK. Now what's the German version of Em-Dash as described by you --
"used e.g. to make a break in the flow of a sentence"?
Traditionally, Continental typography uses only the en-dash, with or
without spaces on both sides. An en-dash with spaces on both sides
is equivalent to the American em-dash without spaces.
Because I just
gave some alternatives to my team and they preferred the medium-long
version (En-Dash). But it's not used to indicate a range of values.
Yes it is. You write e.g. 128-255 (128 to 255) with an en-dash.
On a side-note, is it really wrong to use Em-Dash with spacing left and
right?

Yes.

Have a look at http://webdesign.crissov.de/Typografie/

[Andreas Prilop]

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

The official-looking
http://www.neue-rechtschreibung.de/r...rk_zeichen.htm
There's nothing "official" with this site.
They even have, for their page that specifically
describes the norms for German orthography, a title element that
grossly violates that orthography:
<title>deutsc he rechtschreibung </title>

Under #520, I read
Man setzt ein Apostroph
But correct is
Man setzt einen Apostroph

[Philipp Lenssen]

In article <Pine.GSO.4.44. 0308141434010.4 339-100000@s5b004>,
nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de says...

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
(...)

Because I just
gave some alternatives to my team and they preferred the medium-long
version (En-Dash). But it's not used to indicate a range of values.

Yes it is. You write e.g. 128-255 (128 to 255) with an en-dash.

You misunderstood me. I was referring to where the character (En-Dash)
is used within the site we're doing. And it's not used to indicate a
range of values, but to separate two parts of a sentence (the German
Gedankenstrich) .

So now I'm left with some questions:

- Which is the right meta-tag to include in my header, in case I can't
fully administrate the server,
- What would I tell the administrator to do,
- On my own Apache server, can I do it myself (I don't fully
administrate it, but I can place my htaccess files),
- What tool allows me to check which character set is being send, and
also lets me know if no character set information was included in the
HTTP header (I suppose I can do this with a browser)?

[Philipp Lenssen]

In article <MP************ ************@Ne ws.Individual.D E>,
ph************* @bb-k.com says...

(...)
So now I'm left with some questions:

- Which is the right meta-tag to include in my header, in case I can't
fully administrate the server,
- What would I tell the administrator to do,
- On my own Apache server, can I do it myself (I don't fully
administrate it, but I can place my htaccess files),
- What tool allows me to check which character set is being send, and
also lets me know if no character set information was included in the
HTTP header (I suppose I can do this with a browser)?

Actually, two more questions:

- I'd prefer to use &ndash;, or isn't that as good as using –?
- On some pages I would change, the doctype is XHTML1 (Strict), I
suppose the issue is all the same?

[Andreas Prilop]

Philipp Lenssen <ph************ *@bb-k.com> wrote:

- I'd prefer to use &ndash;, or isn't that as good as using –?
Netscape 4.x will understand – but not &ndash; .
- On some pages I would change, the doctype is XHTML1 (Strict), I
suppose the issue is all the same?

Doesn't matter.

[Andreas Prilop]

Philipp Lenssen <ph************ *@bb-k.com> wrote:

- Which is the right meta-tag to include in my header, in case I can't
fully administrate the server,
From the previous discussion, I assume you mean to set the encoding
("charset") of your pages.
- What would I tell the administrator to do,
- On my own Apache server, can I do it myself (I don't fully
administrate it, but I can place my htaccess files),
You have been pointed to http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTTP-charset
already in this thread.
- What tool allows me to check which character set is being send, and
also lets me know if no character set information was included in the
HTTP header (I suppose I can do this with a browser)?

You should consult http://validator.w3.org/ anyway and it will tell you
about the encoding, too.

--
Top posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

[Stan Brown]

In article <MP************ ************@Ne ws.Individual.D E> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Philipp Lenssen
<ph************ *@bb-k.com> wrote:

OK. Now what's the German version of Em-Dash as described by you --
"used e.g. to make a break in the flow of a sentence"? Because I just
gave some alternatives to my team and they preferred the medium-long
version (En-Dash). But it's not used to indicate a range of values.
You might get a different answer if you used a different font.

But, with respect, I think what anyone "prefers" isn't really the
issue when you're writing in English. There are rules, and they
should be followed or your work will look amateurish. (Are you
publishing your Web site in English. I'll assume you are, but if
you're publishing it in German then the rest of this article does
not apply!)

One rule, for instance, is that you make a break in a sentence with
an em dash or (on a typewriter) two consecutive hyphens. I'm sorry,
but an en dash is really not correct for this in English, even if it
may be in German.

Another rule is that a range of values is indicated with an en dash.
"J.S. Bach, 1685-1750" should have an en dash, not a hyphen. On a
typewriter, the en dash is represented by a single hyphen.
The old site is actually using a single dash for the purpose of breaking
a sentence. It looks really wrong to me.
I don't know what you mean by "a single dash". If you mean a single
_hyphen_, character 45, the it doesn't just look wrong, it _is_
wrong. A single en dash is also wrong. But if you mean a single em
dash, it's right.
On a side-note, is it really wrong to use Em-Dash with spacing left and
right? 'Cause that's what I do so far.

This is more a matter of publishers' "house style" than an agreed
rule. Some publishers use thin spaces, others use regular spaces,
others use no space at all. (Older books used other punctuation
adjacent to the em dash; this is no longer considered correct.)

If you do use spaces, you probably want to do something like this:
the one thing&nbsp;— the only thing&nbsp;— is
That way your line can break after an em dash but not before it.
(Are there any browsers smart enough to break after the em dash but
not before, in something like
the one thing—the only thing—is
where there are no spaces around the em dashes?)

Spaces are not usually written around the en dash.

Suggestion: If it's a matter of rules of English punctuation, as
opposed to how to represent punctuation in HTML, then
alt.usage.engli sh is probably a better newsgroup. I'm _not_
crossposting this because maybe I've misinterpreted everything and
you're actually talking about German punctuation -- in which case
you probably haven't read this far. :-)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Stan Brown wrote:

Like the business of ." and ". it seems -- in the US the period must
come inside the quotes, but UK practice is not so rigid.

Fowler's MEU 2nd edition ed. Gowers (dunno whether this was from the
original or from the editor of the 2nd edition) categorises two
distinct rule sets, the "convention al" and the "logical". The
"convention al" one corresponds to US usage.

UK practice is "much debated", but saying that it is "not so rigid"
would be misleading, since each school of thought is pretty rigid in
its position ;-}

The conventional one was AIUI developed because of physical
limitations of hot type.

The logical one seems to have much to commend it when no such
limitations supervene.

In the treatment of question and exclamation marks, MEU2 concludes
that the illogicality of the conventional approach is exposed, and
concludes that authors from both schools of thought therefore follow
the logical ordering with those marks.

Did you say "I am not my brother's keeper"?
I said "am I my brother's keeper?"

and so on.

[Henri Sivonen]

In article <Xn************ *************** **@193.229.0.31 >,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:

I know that for Finnish, the official rules did not
originally make the distinction, and the current rules explicitly say
that you can choose whether you use EN DASH or EM DASH,
Those rules weren't written by typographers. They were written by
linguists whose attitude seems to have been "whatever as long as it is
not the hyphen".
which corresponds to the actual usage

But not necessarily with typographer opinion. There are a lot of
clueless actual use cases--many of which can be attibuted to the
brokenness of the default "correction s" made by Microsoft Word or to the
bad design of keyboard layouts. (Typing of the right characters on
non-Apple Finnish keyboard layouts is unnecessary hard.)

--
Henri Sivonen
hs******@iki.fi
http://www.iki.fi/hsivonen/
Mozilla Web Author FAQ: http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html

[Andreas Prilop]

Henri Sivonen <hs******@iki.f i> wrote:

Traditionally, Continental typography uses only the en-dash, with or
without spaces on both sides. An en-dash with spaces on both sides
is equivalent to the American em-dash without spaces.
En dashes without spaces meaning break of flow in Continental
typography?

Please read again what I wrote.
AFAIK, the common typographer opinion is:

American:
Range: en dash without spaces
Break of flow: em dash without spaces

European (including comtemporary British):
Range: en dash without spaces
Break of flow: en dash with spaces

Exactly what I wrote.