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Re: lynx-dev LYNX: "—": em-dash?
From: |
pg |
Subject: |
Re: lynx-dev LYNX: "—": em-dash? |
Date: |
Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:27:28 -0600 (MDT) |
In a recent note, brian j. pardy said:
> Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 19:16:56 -0700
>
> > > This code: who—he's my boss—who runs
> >
> > you're right, it should be ` -- ': that's correct secretarial style.
> >
> > and while we're on it, Lynx should write 2 spaces after a full stop:
> > that's also professional secretarial practice.
>
> I don't think that lynx should be in the business of correcting
> punctuational errors/preferences when it comes to text presented on the
> web -- I'd much prefer to leave that to the whim of the author.
>
This isn't correcting errors or overriding preferences; these are
two legitimate technical issues: the former concerns presentation of
a conventionally wide character in a monospaced display; the latter
is not overriding the author's preference -- the standard requires
that sequences of spaces be treated as a single space on unpreformatted
text input, but leaves open the presentation of sentence breaks.
Practically, there's good reason to avoid 2 spaces after a full stop,
to avoid the jarring "Dr. Smith" effect. You can't count on
^^
the author's using an NBSP here.
-- gil