Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes)

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[edit] "Figure dash"

The figure dash is first described under "Dashes and hyphens used on Wikipedia" as being the same as the minus sign ("−"), and then later under "Dashes not used on Wikipedia" as something that is used in telephone numbers etc. ("‒"). This is a bit confusing. —skagedal... 01:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The figure dash (U+2012) is meant to be the same width as lining figures, for use in tables. It is a dash for telephone numbers, etc, and not a minus sign (U+2212). There's also a modifier letter minus sign (U+02D7). None of these should be used in Wikipedia, because (from memory) MSIE borks them up. —Michael Z. 2006-12-16 01:34 Z
I came to this Talk page to raise the contradiction that skagedal raised. This really needs to be clarified on the project page. The footnote is not sufficient to distinguish the two different characters that the page refers to as a figure dash. As the two statements stand, they appear to be, and indeed are, contradictory. I am not sufficiently knowledgable to do the clarification myself. Finell (Talk) 22:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dashes in article names

This was brought up by an anon on the Help Desk, and then my user talk page. See WP:VPT#Dashes in article names for info; I'd prefer if discussion was held there (I'm cross-posting it here because WP:MOSDASH is relevant to the discussion and may change as a result). --ais523 16:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

A related issue was running at WP:VPP#Style: dashes in page names.
I don't see "inconsistency" in the guidelines (who said that?)
Neither the VPP discussion, nor the VPT/UT:ais523/UT:Nightstallion discussion make clear imho why anything should change wrt to the current guidance? --Francis Schonken 17:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
  • The question is, does If hyphens and dashes are needed to write a page name correctly (e.g., Piano-Rag-Music, Jack-in-the-box, Nineteen Eighty-Four), prefer simple hyphens, and avoid hair spaces, even in the odd case of a range forming part of the title, e.g., History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991). in section Dash guidelines for Wikipedia editors overrules Wikipedia should use standard rules of English punctuation for dashes., the first sentence in that manual, or not. --213.155.224.232 23:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Why don't you quote the third bullet too? It reads:

If for greater precision another type of dash is used, always provide a redirect from the variant with simple hyphens and without hair spaces. Note however that using less common types of dashes in non-redirect page names can easily break Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), for the reasons given in the Rationale section of that guideline.

Or, to put the same question otherwise: is something wrong with that? --Francis Schonken 00:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, if you're saving a file locally, browsers by default take the title of the HTML page as a file name. For WP articles that is the article name. I don't know how US-en based Windows systems behave, but in CE (Central Europe) systems there's a problem if you want to reload that locally saved file back to your browser. In W95 and W98, what I checked, loading a file including an em dash in its file name, fail to load in total. In XP, what I use, reloading the file into IE works, but any pictures, styles and so on are missing since the browser doesn't recognise the subdirectory in which that data is stored in. I am pretty sure that effects any Latin 2 based Windows systems, maybe even Latin 1 (but I have no available). The test to verify would be. Save an article with an em dash, e.g. War in Somalia (2006–present) but don't change the name. Then finish your internet connection, empty the browsers cache. Then double click on the file in the Windows explorer. If now the article appears in your browser window without any images then you see the problem I am talking about. --213.155.224.232 14:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for usability (see e.g. Wikipedia:Usability). What you describe is very much an Old versions of MS Windows problem ('95 and '98 are currently "officially" not even supported any longer by their manufacturer...). OK, I think Wikipedia technical people should do as much as they can to keep MediaWiki software (and its implementation on any Wikipedia site) as compatible as they can with whatever system that is still more than marginally used (across unicode compatibility or not). Then, the actual problem you describe is a problem that only occurs in an off-site situation (a problem that furthermore can be avoided by the way you save the files on such older systems). I'm not sure what the community thinks about this (that is: keeping absolute compatibility to all systems, whatever their age, and as well both in off-line as on-line situations, even for easily avoidable issues). In this case (for the easily-avoidable off-line problem with MS Windows 95 and 98 etc systems), I'd be inclined to drop that far-reaching backward-compatibility issue (why don't you ask Microsoft to solve it? They're the ones that for instance fail to give a correct implementation to the unicode standard!) - certainly if this far-reaching backward compatibility issue couldn't be saved without making the MediaWiki software lose too much of the unicode-related advantages. (could someone technically-experienced check the viability of the technical issues I asserted above)
See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)#Printability for characters/glyphs/... that should be avoided in Wikipedia page names for compatibility of the on-line Wikipedia with older systems, AFAIK the "ndash" is however not an unprintable character in that sense. Or is it? --Francis Schonken 15:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The issue occurs at XP as well as W95/98. AFAIK, XP isn't an older system so far. --213.155.224.232 18:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, no, I couldn't trigger the problem you describe on my windows XP system. Pictures in the article are fine, even after disconnecting network/internet and emptying browser cache (don't even see what disconnecting internet and emptying browser cache would change, but I did it). I even rebooted.
I did this both for:
True, when saving as "html, complete" the bar with the current donation amount in the template currently on top of each page didn't render, and neither did the non-article related sidebar, and some of the css info (hardly surprising, but that is completely unrelated with this hyphen/ndash/mdash issue: I did the same procedure with Lake, with exactly the same result). When saving as .mht ("single file"), the sidebar & css info is contained in the file. Note that in the current IE (v. 7) saving as .mht is set as default (this used to be "html, complete" in previous versions).
So no, there is no problem with Windows XP specifically related to n-dashes or m-dashes in Wikipedia page names. Maybe try "make available off-line"-function if you don't have an up-to-date browser (which is however a free update, so I wouldn't see why not to update). --Francis Schonken 06:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

So it seems that's an issue with not-US-en installations only. But, who is installing IE 7.0 without being sure that the system will run afterwards (never change a winning team) - me not. I had to redo too much complete installations with loosing to much data in my life. So I use IE 6 with the latest updates, also because MS so far doesn't offer IE 7 in Czech and many other Eastern Europe languages as it did with IE 6 or as does Firefox. --213.155.224.232 12:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I was using a "not-US-en" installation all the time.
Anyway, I ran the same tests on a Win XP not-US-en - SP1 (the other was SP2) - IE6, and I've seen the problem now (so still not sure whether it's "SP1→SP2" that solves the issue or IE6→IE7, or *both*). The problem occurs both with n-dash and m-dash, and can't be solved by saving as .mht, nor by saving under a different name that doesn't contain these dashes. As far as I can see the problem occurs when the browser sends the "save as file" request to the Wikimedia servers: the browser window doesn't seem to have a problem to get "%E2%80%93" translated to an en-dash in the page name (and similarly to have "%E2%80%94" translated to em-dash), while the same transformation doesn't seem to happen when the same request is sent by the "save" function of the same browser. Might be the problem can be solved server-side (MediaWiki software? Webserver software?), but I'm not sure about that. The file & folder names proposed by the browser neatly distinguish between hyphen/n-dash/m-dash, so that's not where the problem lies.
OK, what we've got thus far:

I rather think its IE6 -> IE7, because I've SP 2 installed. --213.155.224.232 20:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed this; it seems that not many people are aware of it yet. I recently got a speedy rename of Category:IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line stations to Category:IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line stations. --NE2 00:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What's the difference between a figure dash and a figure dash?

From the article:
"The minus sign or figure dash (−) is ... supported in almost all browsers, and can be used in Wikipedia."
"The figure dash ("‒") should not be used on Wikipedia."

The reference at the end points out that they are summoned differently, so why do we call them exactly the same thing? Should one be the x2012 figure dash or similar? — Ianiceboy 06:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The minus sign and the figure dash might in practice be identical, but they have different Unicode characters. It looks like "figure dash" in the first line is meant to be an alternate name for "minus", a character which is fine, but the "figure dash" in the second line refers to the specific Unicode character called "figure dash". The question is: is the figure dash practically identical to the minus sign? —Centrx→talk • 03:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This context

Which of the four dashes is recommended for Bedhead#Discography? This widely used context is not mentioned in this page, and should be. Badagnani 10:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too wishy-washy for guideline

Lots of talk about what different people do (like article of how dashes are used around world), but short on guidance of what to do here at wikipedia. Specific question: leave spaces around em-dash? Yes/no? Fast answer makes good guideline.--MajorHazard 14:15, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

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