How WordPress Handles Dashes and Hyphens

WordPress has always valued typography. Properly “curled” quotes, fancy dashes — like this — and more.

I want to look specifically at dashes, and talk about how WordPress handles the conversion of hyphens to dashes.

First, let’s talk about the three most common forms of horizontal strokes that exist. The first is the hyphen-minus. This is the key that is probably to the right of your “0” key on your keyboard. It is often called a “minus” or a “hyphen”. It is neither of these, and yet it is both. It is a special character that is somewhere in-between a minus sign and a hyphen. As such, it can serve either purpose. I’m just going to call that a “hyphen” for the rest of this post, just to save time.

An em-dash (—) is a wide dash — the width of the letter “m” being its guiding length. Em-dashes signify a thought break, rather like parenthesis, but with a stronger implied break.

An en-dash (–) is slightly shorter — the width of the letter “n” being its guiding length. En-dash use is probably one of the least known skills in everyday punctuation. The en-dash is used for:

• Ranges of number values: (2–4 teaspoons, from 1:00–2:30pm, ages 7–10)
• Relationships and connections: (a JFK–Atlanta flight, Bose–Einstein condensate, the Jackson–Murray fight, the Macy–Jaquith wedding)
• Attributive compounds: (pre–Vietnam War weapons, the ex–Vice President non–New York style pizza)

Here’s how WordPress replaces hyphens with dashes:

Foo {3 hyphens, spaced} Bar → Foo — Bar (em-dash)
Foo{3 hyphens, no space}Bar → Foo—Bar (em-dash)
Foo {2 hyphens, spaced} Bar → Foo — Bar (em-dash)

Foo{2 hyphens, no space}Bar → Foo–Bar (en-dash)
Foo {1 hyphen, spaced} Bar → Foo – Bar (en-dash)

The last replacement seems misguided, and I wish it weren’t made (or that it were an em-dash instead).

So, three hyphens always gets you an em-dash. Two hyphens gets you an em-dash if spaced apart from surrounding words. Else, you get an en-dash. If you want more control, then I suggest you do as I do, and actually start typing the correct dashes (WordPress won’t mess with them). On OS X, en-dashes are typed with Opt-{hyphen}, and em-dashes are typed with Opt-Shift-{hyphen}. In Windows, en-dashes are typed with Alt + 0150, and em-dashes are typed with Alt + 0151.

You can also type out the HTML entities in WordPress’ HTML mode: — and –.