I tend to agree with Peter, though my writing style owes more to the AP
stylebook than Chicago.  That and a **lot** of reading when I was growing
up.  It took me longer to learn *why* things were done that way than to
learn to *do* things that way.  ^_^

(more below)

Peter Ahlstrom wrote:

On Sunday, November 16, 2003, at 12:41 PM, Brian Randall wrote:

    Hmm.  Peter, what does the Chicago Manual of style say about proper
dash/hyphen usage?  I'd offer my suggestions, but I don't actually
know....

Ack, that's twice now you've invoked my name and made reference to
Chicago while responding to a Haynie fic.

    You are an authority, as far as I can tell; few others write with as
much confidence or the use of sites they can reference explaining why
things should be a specific way.

In any case, spacing around dashes should be consistent--either no
spaces or one space on each side. Two hyphens are a manuscript
substitute for the dash, and besides, the dash is not in the standard
low ASCII set and thus causes problems transferring between platforms,
the same way curly quotes do.

(snip to EOT)

I, personally, put a space on each side of an em dash -- it just seems to
look more balanced that way.  Maybe it's because I learned to typeset,
professionally, at a young and impressionable age.

^_^

--Steffan


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