Re: [PATCH v2] Documentation: render dash correctly

From: Andrei Rybak <rybak.a.v@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 23, 2023, 18:52 UTC
Message-ID: <e3f57ef0-7544-8f35-fd97-fdcbe1144e7e@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAN0heSogz0cdhVJdiZhCc2_fcHzJggPjbS0wCAQkRh1uZMxLig@mail.gmail.com>

On 23/01/2023 12:04, Martin Ågren wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Mon, 23 Jan 2023 at 10:01, Andrei Rybak <rybak.a.v@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>   highlighted with a `$` sign; if you are trying to recreate these
>> -example by hand, do not cut and paste them---they are there
>> +example by hand, do not cut and paste them--they are there
>>   primarily to highlight extra whitespace at the end of some lines.
> 
> OK, so this is one of the new ones compared to v1. I can see the
> argument for adding some spaces around the "--" for consistency and to
> make this a bit easier to read in the resulting manpage (which can of
> course be very subjective), but then I can also see that kind of change

There are some less subjective guidelines. Asciidoc turns "--" into an em-dash.[1] In English, em-dash is almost always not surrounded by spaces (it is in French, for example), while en-dash is spaced in English when used instead of an em-dash.[2][3][4]

This means that it's all the other places that use " -- " with spaces that are incorrect.

References:

1. https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/syntax-quick-reference/#text-replacements

2. English Wikipedia is clear about its usage of en- and em-dashes:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Dashes

3. Chicago Manual of Style FAQ doesn't spell out the spacing, but it's
    clear from examples:
    https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes/faq0002.html

4. More confirmation on English Language and Usage Q&A website on Stack
    Exchange network: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/154998/54197

> being left out as orthogonal to this patch.

Indeed, correcting spacing around dashes is orthogonal.  Also, it might
not be very desirable to have so much churn for spacing issues.

> This v2 patch looks good to me.

Thank you for review.

> Martin