Wikipedia talk:Short horizontal line

How hard can it be?

A slippery slope here. Should we perhaps deprecate the use of parentheses because it's asking too much of editors to press the Shift key? I mean, if every other parenthetical phrase looked like this

See Spot 9the Dalmatian0 run!

instead of this

See Spot (the Dalmation) run!

we'd soon get used to it. Ditto for double quotation marks—make 'em all single. ¡And don't «get me started» on àçŒñ†$ and diacriticals and common symbols of all sorts—too much trouble to bother with. While we're at it, maybe we should look into abandoning capitalization norms; the universal application of lowercase would speed up non-bot edits, and users editing from their phones would be in hog heaven.

If this were April 1, I'd chalk it up to a joke, but I'm detecting a worrisome seriousness about all this.

Anyway, how about this source code?

1. an em-dash (—)
2. an en-dash (–)
3. a hyphen (-)

Rivertorch (talk) 04:52, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

What seems to be being neglected here is that a massive majority of Wikipedia users are not editors, and the of the editors, many have better things to do with their time than figure out dashes. Asking the casual user to type an ndash to get to an article would be incredibly stupid. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

No-one ever even suggested such a thing. No reader or editor ever needs to use dashes. — kwami (talk) 08:31, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

What has been suggested is yet another set of parallel redirects, with hyphens substituted for dashes. Combine that with the existing set of alternate capitalization redirects, and life quickly becomes unmanageable. This is an issue for {{DISPLAYTITLE}}, not actual title text.—Kww(talk) 15:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree about "slippery slope". If this page ever attained any serious status, the whole notion of guidelines (and some policies) would come crashing down in some "Ignore all rules" free for all. The readers, not the editors, count, and the use of professional typography is more important than another layer of use-it-or-don't-use-it. Every publishing house has a guideline, and usually applies it consistently. WP is no exception. Tony (talk) 16:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Right. It's no exception if it is intended to be taken seriously, anyway. WP is in the sometimes awkward position of being both follower (e.g., NOR policy, notability guideline) and leader (consistently at or near the top of the page in every Google search). Adopting a casual or dismissive attitude toward the use of standard punctuation flies in the face of the former (every reliable secondary and tertiary source, be it book, newspaper, journal or other encyclopedia, recognizes the value of consistent punctuation rules and applies them) and sets a terrible precedent (if WP accepts sloppiness, others will invariably follow).

Kwamikagami, no reader needs to use dashes because redirect pages obviate that need. Editors wishing to communicate clearly do, on occasion, need to use dashes. When they fail to do so in article space, helpful gnomes will arrive, sometimes immediately and sometimes years later, and do it for them. For some reason, the act of correcting a long-term mistake sometimes sparks controversy.

Kww, perhaps the scope of this project page is narrower than its wording implies. (Redirects and templates are outside my usual bailiwick.) A series of sweeping, reckless comments were made at WP:AN to the effect of "Dashes? Who needs 'em!" This attitude seemed to be echoed here, hence my comments above. Rivertorch (talk) 17:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

That's why I said they don't need to: the MOS does not force you to do anything, s.o. else will simply come along after you and tidy up. So if you find en dashes awkward or just don't want to bother, you don't really need to worry about it.

As for KWW's point above, I don't see the redirects becoming unmanageable, but the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} idea is a good one. That is certainly worth discussing at MOS. However, I just tried it out, and it doesn't work: you can't change capitalization or punctuation of titles with that template, anything that requires different unicode, all you can do is change html formatting like small caps, italics, soft superscript, etc. — kwami (talk) 23:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

There's some lines missing. For instance "−" (minus) and "‑" (NBH) which are different from "-" (hyphen-minus) ; and "‒" (figure dash) -- a different dash altogether, and ofcourse "--" ; then there is "―" (horizontal bar); not mentioning the variants "－" (FULLWIDTH hyphen-minus (Japanese anyone?)) or "﹣" (small hyphen-minus) and "﹘" (small em-dash); and the weird "゠" (double hyphen)

64.229.100.45 (talk) 08:00, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Not to mention ─ and a few dozen other short horizontal lines scattered about the Unicode character sets. There's probably even a Klingon dash in there someplace. 28bytes (talk) 15:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm a little disappointed that an edit war apparently didn't break out over the spelling Dalmation here. Is it too late to start one now? (Asking for a friend.) DBaK (talk) 17:36, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Minus/plus/times

You know, there have been edit/move wars over "-" and "−" as well (ASCII vs Unicode; sort ordering). Not forgetting the Japanese version "－" 64.229.100.45 (talk) 08:02, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

That also cause problems with plus (sort ordering), there being "+", the Japanese one "＋", and some weirder variants. 64.229.100.45 (talk) 08:14, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

And just having suddenly cropped up, there's a debate going on about × versus "x" now... 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

go/search text box

Re [1]

I'm surprised to find that hyphen and em/en dash aren't already treated as aliases by the search function. It should be a pretty easy software change. Simplest thing is suggest it at VPT or Help:Search about it. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 16:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Some context

Anyone who comes to this proposal long after the incident that inspired has been forgotten may want to also read this thread. There was far more support for this than the thread above may suggest. -- llywrch (talk) 20:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Link is appropriate

The essay was written in good faith in response to Skomorokh's suggestion [2] at the Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Short horizontal line discussion, which three other editors said 'Keep per Skomorokh.' Wikipedia practice is that essays with opposing viewpoints, e.g. WP:DTR and WP:TRR, be crosslinked. Gerardw (talk)

No, it isn't appropriate, you're not even talking about the same thing, you're mocking the author, which of this essay, which is not the point of an essay. Sven Manguard Wha? 12:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

This discussion is redundant with the current Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:No capital letters. It is reasonable if the community consensus is to keep the essay, we keep the link, and vice versa. Gerardw (talk) 13:28, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Just in case anyone thinks this battle is over

See Template_talk:Infobox_SCOTUS_case#The_ndash --j⚛e decker^talk 02:05, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Specific usages

My English classes gave me the impression –es (–) were used for number ranges, ex. 3 – 5 or 9:00 – 5:00—as opposed to —es (—) being used kind of like commas. Normal hyphens (-) are used for some compound words, like "Mexican-American War".

If that is, indeed, how these dashes are used, that may be good to include in the essay.

74.37.13.86 (talk) 05:47, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Omg

I wish I had written this essay. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 22:33, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Current kerfuffle

This, and the section that follows it. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 22:34, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

People break Wikipedia:Civility over this. It is inappropriate to judge people over what is important to them. This is a wise essay and in the discussion you link and many others the tension is higher than it should be. "...so long as they only involve other people who also care..." is great advice for lots of the highly nuanced disputes on wiki. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:34, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

The idea orthography is trivial is incompatible with the practical work of publishing of an encyclopedia.

It is ironic to see an accusation of incivility in a post which calls a polemical essay "wise" and praises it for being "great advice" and then repeats its facetious directive to "only involve [in 'argu[ment]...about the topic'] other people who also care"—that directive being unnecessary. Unless you have physical access to someone or you file a lawsuit against them, you can't "involve" anyone other than yourself in any thing. The only purpose of that "advice" is to belittle those who do care. catsmoke (talk) 16:45, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

The October 2018 kerfuffle is now archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 208#Doesn't MOS:DASH contradict WP:ACCESS?. Thryduulf (talk) 23:02, 26 July 2019 (UTC)