Board Thread:The Time Lord Academy/@comment-6433721-20130309061324/@comment-188432-20130309185720

To sorta echo user:Shambala108: This thing here - is not a dash under any circumstance. Where there be spaces around it or not, that is a hyphen.

This thing here – is also not a "proper" dash. It's an en-dash. I personally think it would be simpler if we just outlawed its use entirely, because the chances are people are not going to be able to grasp when to use it and when not.

The use of two hyphens, as with --, is what people did on typewriters in substitution for a "true dash", which they could not make. The "true dash" is an em-dash. It's clearly longer than a hyphen in the way that an en-dash is not. Here's the difference in the way these two things look:


 * The Doctor said he was coming back – quickly.
 * The Doctor said he was coming back — quickly.