Consistency: spacing around em dashes

[devreal]

The use of spaces around em dash is inconsistent:

# without spaces
$ egrep "[a-z]\\-\\-\\-[a-z]" *.tex */*.tex | wc -l
9
# with spaces
$ egrep "[a-z] \\-\\-\\- [a-z]" *.tex */*.tex | wc -l
36

From what I can see, some style manuals recommend no spaces (Chicago Manual of Style, Oxford Guide to Style) but there are others (NYT, AP) that recommend (small) spaces [1]. My personal preference is having no spaces but that might just be acquired taste (for one, space-em dash-space is quite large and line breaks before/after an em dash are ugly imo).

Fun fact: the use is inconsistent even in the instructions document.

In any case, the use of spacing around em dashes should be consistent throughout the standard document and documented in the instructions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Spacing_and_substitution

[wgropp]

Good point - thanks for the catch. I'll fix this instructions; for the record, I prefer no spaces but obviously don't check :)

[wgropp]

Instructions fixed - no spaces around the em dash.

[martinruefenacht]

Do we already have a PR to fix the spacing in the document? (Will there be one?)

I think this is another one that would be reasonable to write a test for related to the Python CI PR.

[wgropp]

I don't think that we have a PR for this yet - I did just the instructions so I wouldn't forget.

[martinruefenacht]

I can take this on and additionally write a test for it to enforce it in future.

I assume this would be part of the editor pass?