[Groff] address@hidden

[Ted Harding]

[Sorry to be late in sending this response -- I got called away this
 morning in the middle of composing it.]

On 31-Mar-04 Andrew J. Piziali wrote:
>    Since we do have some professional typesetters in this community,
> perhaps you might offer some advise on the proper length hyphen (or
> dash) to use for an interjected phrase in a sentence.  For example,
> "I might state -- for the sake of emphasis -- that I am also annoyed by
> the proliferation of spam messages."  What is the proper length "--" to
> use in formatted output?  I have been using the -ms "\*-" character,
> somewhat long, but definitely sets the phrase apart.  I could also use
> "\-" (a bit shorter) or "-" (shorter still, a true hyphen).

The "standard" is to use the em-dash whose groff name is \(em and this
is indeed what is defined in -ms as the string \*-
  .ds - \(em

I prefer to put a little bit of space round it, therefore defining

  .char \(Em \^\(em\^

The character \- is a "minus" sign in groff, which is in principle
different from the en-dash \(en (though whether you can see the
difference depends on what font you are printing in). The en-dash
is normally slightly longer than the minus sign, and distinctly
shorter than the em-dash.

The "standard" uses for the en-dash are
a) In "ranges" such as "pages 10\(en15", "October\(enDecember",
   and "links" such as "the London\(enEdinburgh railway line";
b) Certain compounds of names and the like, such as
   "a Conservative\(enLiberal coalition",
   "the Herzsprung\(enRussell diagram" (see astrophysics; this
   is a compound name made of the names of the two astronomers
   Herzsprung and Russell). It's quite common to use the hyphen
   in this context; however, though I personally consider the
   en-dash to be better. "Double-barrelled" personal names
   created e.g. by marriage between a Smith and a Robinson
   should be indicated by a hyphen: "Smith-Robinson".

Once again, in (a) (and maybe sometimes (b)) I play a bit with
surrounding space, so I define

  .char \(En \^\(en
  .char \(eN \(en\^
  .char \(EN \^\(en\^

to allow for the different visible widths of the digits 0,1,2...9:

  1\(en10  10\(En12  6\(EN8  51\(eN60

The minus sign \- should always be used in a mathemtical context,
even when simply reporting negative numbers (as in your bank account).
Groff's 'eqn' will automatically do this, of course. Again personally,
I find it extremely irritating when people use a hyphen instead (it
looks far too short).

After all this, however, as Steve Izma and Alejandro Lopez-Valencia
have already pointed out, conventions differ in different places and
according to different styles and tastes. However, I think that the
above gives results which should be both stylistically good and
aesthetically pleasing.

Best wishes,
Ted.


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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
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Date: 31-Mar-04                                       Time: 20:01:49
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