Forum:Use of em dash and en dash

Hi all,

some of you might've noticed that my bot has been changing a lot of articles these past few days. However, I was noticed that I have made an oversight regarding the dash used in references. As you can see here, there are now two different dashes found in references: The en-dash (–) and the em-dash (—). The latter is automatically generated by the template, so my bot didn't replace it with the en-dash. This thread is to see if anyone would reasonably oppose changing the em-dash to an en-dash in the reference template.

For reference, you can read about the correct use of the em-dash here. An em-dash is used in place of parantheses, commas and colons. None of these apply to the reference template, which is why I replaced the em-dash with an en-dash whenever it's appropriate. A similar case would be the "Links" section of articles, where a dash or a hyphen is used as well. I would correct those next. • Seelentau 愛 議 22:21, December 13, 2018 (UTC)

According to your reference, that would also be an improper use of the en dash. Dragonus Nesha (talk) 22:36, December 13, 2018 (UTC)

Yup. As I said, it was an oversight. In hindsight, replacing all dashes that are used that way would've been the correct course of action. • Seelentau 愛 議 22:43, December 13, 2018 (UTC)

But why replace what you consider an incorrect usage with something you also consider an incorrect usage? That seems silly; it's not resolving your issue. Standard citation styles make up their own punctuation rules to convey information in a streamlined fashion. Qref is a custom one so using an open em dash is the wiki's prerogative. Unless it is causing confusion for people reading, then it doesn't need to change. Dragonus Nesha (talk) 23:57, December 13, 2018 (UTC)

Because I didn't notice that the ref template has the em-dash build in. But it's no biggie, if you want me to, I can easily replace the en-dash with an em-dash again. • Seelentau 愛 議 00:14, December 14, 2018 (UTC)

Okay, so I'm now changing all spaced en-dashes to spaced em-dashes. Then everything should be streamlined, right? I could also change the spaced hyphens to spaced em-dashes as well. • Seelentau 愛 議 03:41, December 14, 2018 (UTC)