[DejaVu-bugs] [Bug 10366] EM DASH (U+2014) should be shorter than HORIZONTAL BAR (U+2015)

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10366





--- Comment #11 from Etan Wexler <bugs.freedesktop.org at r-6.org>  2008-06-29 13:48:37 PST ---
Comment #4 is incorrect on several counts:

> Also, EN dash is supposed to be 1/2 the size of EM dash (as far as I understand
> it).

This is not necessarily the case. The names of the em dash and en dash reflect
the origins of their designs. An em dash, originally, was as long as a capital
letter “M” was wide. An en dash, originally, was as long as a capital
letter “N” was wide. Of course, designs and usage have evolved. Still,
I’ve never heard of a typographic rule that the length of an em dash should
be twice the length of its respective en dash.

> As far as I can see, en dash is slightly larger than hyphen, and em
> dash is twice as big as en dash (but still small enough to have a small gap
> between two em dash characters). And horizontal line is the largest and has no
> gap between characters.

A en dash should be distinctly longer than, not slightly longer than, a hyphen.
(A hyphen may be thicker than its respective dashes. A hyphen may be tilted
from lower left to upper right.) Interglyphic gaps are possible regardless of
the dash length. We have left and right bearings for this purpose.


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