{"id":1833,"date":"2023-09-10T18:37:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T22:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2023-09-11T19:28:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T23:28:47","slug":"use-minus-sign-feature-specifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/use-minus-sign-feature-specifications\/","title":{"rendered":"Use the minus sign for feature specifications"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LaTeX has a dizzying number of options for different types of horizontal dash. The following are available:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>A single <code>-<\/code> is a short dash appropriate for hyphenated compounds (like\u00a0<em>encoder-decoder<\/em>).<\/li>\r\n<li>A single dash in math mode,<code>$-$<\/code>, is a longer minus sign<\/li>\r\n<li>A double <code>--<\/code> is a longer &#8220;en-dash&#8221; appropriate for numerical ranges (like <em>3-5<\/em>).<\/li>\r\n<li>A triple <code>---<\/code> is a long &#8220;em-dash&#8221; appropriate for interjections (like<em> this\u2014no, I mean like that<\/em>).<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>My plea to linguists is to actually use math mode and the minus sign when they are writing binary features. If you want to turn this into a simple macro, you can please the following in your preamble:<\/p>\r\n<pre>\\newcommand{feature}[2]{\\ensuremath{#1}\\textsc{#2}}<\/pre>\r\n<p>and then write <code>\\feature{-}{Back}<\/code> for nicely formatted feature specifications.<\/p>\r\n<p>Note that this issue has an exact parallel in Word and other WYSIWYG setups: there the issue is as simple as selecting the Unicode minus sign (U+2212) from the inventory of special characters (or just googling &#8220;Unicode minus sign&#8221; and copying and pasting what you find).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LaTeX has a dizzying number of options for different types of horizontal dash. The following are available: A single &#8211; is a short dash appropriate for hyphenated compounds (like\u00a0encoder-decoder). A single dash in math mode,$-$, is a longer minus sign A double &#8212; is a longer &#8220;en-dash&#8221; appropriate for numerical ranges (like 3-5). A triple &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/use-minus-sign-feature-specifications\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Use the minus sign for feature specifications&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-phonology","category-presentation-of-self"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1844,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions\/1844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}