I’ve noticed that when I place an em-dash in a post, which is typically represented by two hyphens on the keyboard, WordPress substitutes a single hyphen.
Example:
thought one--thought 2
results in:
thought one–thought 2
But if I add spaces around the --, I get what I want:
thought one -- thought 2
results in:
thought one — thought 2
That is a correct em-dash: a dash about the width of the letter ‘M’ (assuming a proportional width font).
I’m not sure what the rules of typography are regarding spaces around em-dashes, but I’ve never put them in myself. Unless I can find a configuration somewhere in WordPress to fix this, I’ll just have to start using spaces.
Update: According to the documentation, the HTML code — will produce an em-dash—just like that.
Tags: misfeature, software, web, wordpress, Writing