Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
I though a minus sign and a dash were the same thing. How are they not the same thing?
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In the days prior to computer keyboards when books were typset character sets were devised which had more characters then are directly available on a computer keyboard. There is a lot of history involved but the minus and the hyphen are distinct characters differing in size as well as spacing before and after they symbol.
The double quote beginning a quotation is different from the double quote used at the end. Both are different from the double quote on the keyboard. The single quote on the keyborad also differs from the typeset single quote.
There are other examples. Note that professional web publishing (html) also makes use of the extended character sets. The goal of all of this is to make sure the text looks as good as is possible on the page or screen and is as easy to read as possible.