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1. blazemiskulin
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   I've been using WP for a while now, and I like it, but there's one little thing that annoys me, and I'm not sure if it's something in WP, in the CSS, or somewhere else. I use a double dash quite often in my sentences. It represents an aside or a tangent.

   However, when typing a double dash--as I frequently do--something in the program translates it to an "em-dash"--a single dash of (supposedly) longer length. However, it's *not* longer. It's virtually impossible to differentiate from an "en-dash" (a hyphen). I want the double-dash, not the em-dash.

   Any clues?

   Version: WP 1.5 (though this was a problem in older versions, too)
   character encoding: UTF-8
   font-family: 'Arial', Verdana, sans-serif;

2. xmarcos
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   If you have te Markdown and/or textile active, turn them off they always change your code.

3. sleep
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Arial doesn't seem to have an en or em dash. (at least on my mac version) only the hyphen.

   It's virtually impossible to differentiate from an "en-dash" (a hyphen).

   hyphen - (concatenation…pro-create)

   en dash – (series…2000–2005)

   em dash — (a harder break than a comma but less than a period)

   three types, all different.

4. blazemiskulin
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Sleep: I'm aware of the difference. However, a keyboard doesn't have an en-dash or em-dash, it only has a hyphen, and others may not know what they are.

   The double-dash is an accepted alternative for the em-dash, and in virtually all common usage, the hyphen is used in place of the en-dash. And the hyphens in my posts actually look like an en-dash (longer than a hyphen).

   My dilema is that something is changing my hyphens into something else. I want it to stop. :(

   xmarcos: I don't have either of those plug-ins activated. I don't have any plug-ins active, actually. I also tried turning off the emoticons (just on a whim) and that didn't affect it, either.

5. vkaryl
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   You could add a class to your CSS to make the double-hyphen the length you prefer - but then you'd have to "span-class" every time you wanted to use it. Unless there's a way to include it in the "html, body".... I'll have to play with it a bit, never thought about it....

6. blazemiskulin
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Fixed!

   I posted this question in another forum, and a friend happened to be really bored this morning and decided to dig through the code. :)

   The culprit is the "functions-formatting.php" file:

   the em-dash:
   $curl = str_replace('--', '& # 8211 ;', $curl);

   the elipsis (another punctuation that I tend to abuse)
   $curl = str_replace('...', '& # 8230 ;', $curl);

   I deleted those two lines, and it's the way I want it now.

7. Kafkaesqui
   Moderator
   Posted 4 years ago #

   You could also turn off the formatting by commenting out the wptexturize 'add_filter' lines in wp-includes/default-filters.php, or through a plugin...

   http://www.coffee2code.com/archives/2004/06/27/plugin-wpuntexturize/
   (Doesn't hit en and em dashes, but they could be added to it.)

   http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/TextControl

8. sleep
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   delete or comment out line 14 of functions-formatting.php

   $curl = str_replace('--', '–', $curl);

   might do the trick…

   Took too long to post :^)

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