How to put a minus in menu

[Devin Asay]

On Jun 12, 2009, at 8:14 AM, Beat Cornaz wrote:

> Thanks Devin & Richmond,
>
> Devin wrote :
>> You could try using an en-dash instead of a hyphen.
>
> I have no idea what an en-dash is (nor does my dictionary). can you
> please explain it to me , Devin?

Sorry, I meant to explain but got in a rush. In typography there are  
three "dash" characters—the hyphen, a standard ASCII character as code  
point 45, and the en dash and em dash. In printed texts the en dash,  
so called because its length is equal to the width of the letter 'n'  
in the given font, is used to show things like date ranges, as in 1 –  
5 March. The length of the em dash equal to the width of the letter  
'm' in the given font. It is used as a true dash, as when using  
parenthetical or elaborative comments such as "On modern operating  
systems we no longer have to use the double hyphen—instead we use the  
em dash, as you see in this sentence."

The trouble with em and en dashes is that they are in so-called "upper  
ASCII", meaning their code points are different in MacRoman vs.  
Windows CP-1251 or ISO 8859-1. On the Mac you use option + hyphen to  
produce an en dash and shift + option + hyphen to produce an em dash.  
On Windows en dash can be typed with ctrl + numeric keypad hyphen and  
em dash using ctrl + alt + numeric keypad hyphen. In MacRoman, en and  
em dashes are ASCII 208 and 209 respectively; in CP 1251 and ISO  
8859-1 they are ASCII 150 and 151 respectively.

The HTML escape entities are – and &endash; unfortunately these  
entities are not part of the subset of HTML that Rev understands.  
Instead you have to use the numeric values – and —.

Probabaly more than you wanted to know, but there it is. :-)

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University