WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Hyphenation best practices

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 5, 2010 11:03AM

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>> Screen readers are also incorrect in identifying a hyphen as "dash".
>
> No, they aren't. They can do whatever is useful to the human being using
> them, for the purpose of understanding the content. Spelling out punctuation
> characters can be helpful.

Indeed. I do think they would be better providing a level of
differentiation between hyphens and dashes. Reading a hyphen in
"red-headed" or "co-worker" is unnecessary and extraneous. At the same
time, it could be useful to verify meaning (e.g., "man-eating shark" -
is it a man eating a shark or a shark that eats men?).

Dashes, on the other hand, if used properly, should almost always be
identified. "Working 9–5" or "Pages 3–9" take an entirely different
meaning without the en dash, as do most other cases where dashes are
used. This isn't to mention that the minus sign should be treated
differently as well.

>> The problem is that authors so typically use
>> hyphens - like this - instead of true dashes — like this.
>
> Using an em dash surrounded by spaces is incorrect according to any English
> style guide I ghave read.

And it's correct in others, such many modern newspaper style guides,
such as the New York Times (which allows spaced em dashes to ensure
vertical flow of type - a good reason to allowed or recommended it in
web prose). A spaced en dash is also a suitable replacement in many
style guides and tends to be more commonly used. The point, though, is
that a hyphen is quite different than any type of dash. Granted, we're
really talking about pedantic differences in accessibility here.

Jared