Date Range with endash should exclude spaces

This must come from a rule other than AP style. In fact, using an ndash is not even part of the AP style standard, but I believe that it was included at user request as an option. Can you provide any sources on why spaces should not be included?

Hi, shelane.

I found a couple of references.

The AP Stylebook (n.d.) uses time examples such as, "Use figures except for noon and midnight. Use a colon to separate hours from minutes: 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 9-11 a.m., 9 a.m. to 5 p.m." which includes an hyphen, but as you said, there doesn't seem to be a rule specific about en dashes, but you can see they omitted spaces around it.

Alexander (2024) writes, "There should be no space surrounding a hyphen (ex: Jan. 1-4)" (p. 2).

Emmitt (2021) also mentions the usage of a hyphen instead of an en dash stating, "AP style advises the use of a hyphen in place of an en dash, as a slash may not be transcribed correctly in some systems", and follows that statement with three examples that exclude spaces around the hyphen. Just below that section Emmitt states that Chicago style prefers the en dash.

So, I suppose I'd argue that if we keep the en dash (instead of a hyphen), we should at least omit the surrounding spaces. I personally like the en dash, and that's a specific requirement mentioned in my organization's style guide, which makes me now wonder if they've based their guidelines on the Chicago style or the AP style...

Anyway, thank you for entertaining this issue with me. I will leave this in your capable hands. I didn't expect this to be such a peculiar situation, so if we must, we are comfortable adding a patch into our composer.json to tweak it for our needs. It's a very useful module, so thank you for the work you've done on it!

--Brian

References

Alexander, V. (2024). AP style. San José State University Writing Center. https://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/AP%20Style-2024.pdf

AP Stylebook. (n.d.). Ask the editor: Highlights. https://apstylebook.com/ask_the_editors/style_guidance

Emmitt, D. (2021, May 21). How to write number ranges (a complete guide). https://www.debbie-emmitt.com/how-to-write-number-ranges-a-complete-guid...

How do you feel about adding a new option so people can choose to upgrade?

- to
- endash
- hyphen

See https://git.drupalcode.org/search?search=endash&nav_source=navbar&projec...

I have no problem with that.

@bjared I pushed a MR branch that adds a setting to use a hyphen (-) as the separator.

When you get a minute, please review the automated tests in that branch—they include a bunch of examples of the expected formatted dates with the hyphen across common cases (single dates, ranges, with/without year).

trackleft2 → closed merge request !23

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