[Python-Dev] Dash

[Richard Oudkerk]

On 18/07/2013 7:55pm, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> This may well be a relic from times when in typewritten text there
> were really only two types of dashes: a short one, typed as a hyphen,
> used for both hyphen and en-dash (and minus sign), and a long one,
> typed as two hyphens, used for em-dash.
>
> I suspect at some point the conversion to HTML or typeset text changed
> so that two hyphens mean en-dash and three mean em-dash, and few
> people noticed (and nobody really wants to type three hyphens except
> for a handful of typographical nuts).

Weren't the docs originally done LaTeX?  In LaTeX "--" is also an 
en-dash and "---" is an em-dash.

-- 
Richard