Quote:
Originally Posted by andym
Hmm I think you can argue it both ways. Grammatically, if you have a perenthesis then it makes more sense to have the dash with the words that are in the parenthesis - even if that means starting a line with a dash . If the dash is introducing a subordinate clause then if makes sense to have the dash with the main clause. The problem is that unless you have way too much time on your hands then you can't go through an entire book making these decisions so it's probably best, for better or worse, to simply leave it to chance. Using the two zero width non-joiners also avoids the risk of the software hyphenating the word and having a part word followed by a dash on the next line.
And the non-breaking space will show as a space. So its's better to use either a zero width joiner or nothing at all.
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To each their own I suppose. A dash represents a pause in the flow of the text and then pregnant pause is better represented on the end of a line than on the beginning of the next IMHO. It also matches the use of the hyphen. Having a dash on the beginning of the line breaks the flow, visually, of the paragraph. The case of the space in my posting was for editors that do not support the butted dash or does not support the zero width non-joiners. If you really look at the results on a page you can certainly tell visually about the impact of the dash. It is not the same as a parenthesis as it is grouped with a start and an end while a dash often does not have this construction although occasionally it does. Personally I will sometimes butt a dash to the preceding text and leave a space after it when I don't know what the tool will do. I do agree that that a non-joiner is the best when the tool supports it but again I will only put one after the dash, not on both sides.
Dale