Typesetting dashes and related glyphs

Previous posts:

After that:

Got me! I should ask Jens. :slight_smile:

Command.

What people call that symbol depends on how they feel about the Mac.

Love it: "Command"
Mixed feelings: "Propeller"
Hate it: "Beanie"

If that minus sign is U+2212, then yes, it is what Snap! uses:

        reportDifference: {
            type: 'reporter',
            category: 'operators',
            spec: '%n \u2212 %n',
            alias: '-'
        },

Ok.

Ok. I'd just call it Command, because that's the official name, if I'm not mistaken.

Edit:

Why does this never work? I hate having to use Snap<i>!</i> because of this.

Oh! I was wrong about what character it is. That character (‒) is actually Figure Dash, U+2012; minus sign (−) is wider. Figure dash is for things like "pages 22‒25." En dash (–), U+2013, is what I was taught to use in ranges of numbers; they never said anything about "figure dash" in my high school printing classes. Things change, I guess...

- ‒ − – —: hyphen, figure dash, minus, en dash, em dash.

Oh.

Are there any other dashes in Unicode?

Edit: BTW you can just use \- ... to keep it from listifying, you don't need ‌ ‌ <span></span> - ....

Edit 2: Just realized the minus was one pixel higher than the other dashes.

Although things look different in different fonts. Here's Baskerville:

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 8.49.34 PM

Things to notice: The Figure Dash is way wider; in fact, it's the same as the en dash, just as I was taught. :~) I'm pretty sure John Baskerville never heard of a "figure dash."

The ones with "dash" in their name are way thinner than the hyphen and minus sign. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I'm guessing to avoid calling attention to themselves and away from the actual text.

The hyphen is lower than the others. I'm pretty sure this is because it's expected to abut lower case letters, most of which don't have ascenders or descenders:

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 8.54.17 PM

whereas the dashes are supposed to line up with the full range of letters and punctuation, and the minus sign to line up with digits, which mostly have ascenders:

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 8.56.20 PM

Sorry, I guess this is kinda off topic, but I really loved my high school print shop! And then my first real job after college was about computer typesetting.

The hyphen there is the thickest.

Oh my gosh! I'm going to have to flag an admin's post!

Or have him split the topic. Posts 66-72.

"Discuss the command symbol on the Mac and various hyphens"

Or just "Discuss Fonts".

P.S. I never has a Mac so I wouldn't know.

Same here.

Edit: just realized you wrote "has" not "had".

Wavy dash :wavy_dash: U+3030
Swung dash ⁓ U+2053
Wave dash 〜 U+301C
Leftwards dashed arrow ⇠U+21E0 and similarly in the other directions
Circled dash ⊝ U+229D
OCR dash ⑈ U+2448
Box drawings light triple dash horizontal ┄ U+2504 and 11 more like that
Dashed triangle-headed rightward arrow ➟ U+279F
Heavy ditto ➠U+27A0
Leftwards double dash arrow ⤌ U+290C and three more like that
Rightwards two-headed triple dash arrow ⤐ U+2910 Don't ask me why!
Leftwards ditto ⬷ U+2B37
Leftwards harpoon with barb up above long dash ⥪ U+296A and three more
Logical AND with horizontal dash ⩜ U+2A5C and ditto OR
Superset beside and joined by dash with subset ⫘ U+2AD8
Long dash from left member of double vertical ⫦ U+2AE6
Presentation form for vertical em dash ︱ U+FE31 ditto en dash
Dashed overline ﹉ U+FE49 ditto underline ﹍ U+FE4D
Small em dash ﹘ U+FE58
Musical symbol dashed barline 𝄄 U+1D104
... and the ones I can't print, like two-em dash U+2E3A ditto three-em, and more dashed arrows in different directions. Note that "presentation form..." and "small em dash" have wide bounding boxes: one em wide (i.e., square) for the former and something less than that, but more than an en wide, for the small em dash.

Aren't you glad you asked?

That's a lot of dashes. And the "Swung dash" looks a lot like a tilde.

No, that's the minus sign.

And so does "Wave dash"!

Sorry, I meant "hyphen".

"Wave dash" looks like a flipped tilde.

That's happened before. Deservedly.