Category talk:BSicon/road–rail

Name of this category

Although this renaming is a very good thing (which I had been saying we need to for a few years now) and I hope it expands to all BSicon cat names, I have to object to the use of the en dash (U+2013 EN DASH) and I deplore that it was not discussed before a massive number of edits was performed. The en dash is an unfortunate choice because its shape and length makes it undistinguishable from a minus sign (the real one, "−" U+2212 MINUS SIGN, which you can see how it should look like in a properly designed font by imagining a "+" without the vertical crossbar); the proper symbol here is an hyphen, which is usually shorter and thicker: "-" (either the dreaded U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS or U+2010 HYPHEN). I understand that there’s some typographic traditions that give the en dash this kind of use, but I suggest we ignore those, just like we don’t type two spaces after a period and do not confuse O"s with "0"s nor "l"s with "I"s and "1"s. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:16, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: I did do this per the enwiki Manual of Style and based on the naming of en:Road–rail vehicle, but I agree that it would have been better to use an ASCII character for convenience. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 15:10, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Using «an ASCII character for convenience» is exactly the opposite of what I’m saying, and that botched guideline you followed stems from that same exact problem: Since the semantics of minus had been hijacked by shortsighteded ASCII/typewriter/telegraph use (the Unicode name is U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, a two-headed beast!), they had to come up with a pretend hyphen and grabbed the en dash for it. (See how, in the other hand, they caved in concerning the apostrophe and quote marks, not only allowing but even prescribing that other ASCII/typewriter/telegraph monstrosity that is the straight “apostrophe” and the straight “quote marks”! Never ceases to amaze me how en.wp’s MoS managed to enshrine the very worst of English typography traditions and how other Wikipedias are always eager to immitate the very worst — and none of the best — from en.wp!) I’m not one to run away from from using proper, “non-ASCII” symbols in Commons cat names (be it "×" or "’" or "þ"), but in this case we have a case of a symbol that looks wrong and feels wrong, and for no good reason. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 09:39, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

The article Dash claims

The preference for an en dash instead of a hyphen in these coordinate/relationship/connection types of terms is a matter of style preference, not inherent orthographic "correctness"; both are equally "correct", and each is the preferred style in some style guides.

So I guess it doesn't really matter? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 09:50, 19 March 2017 (UTC)