h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A87768382

I've just subbed and returned this to the Editors and noticed a hyphen I hadn't upgraded to a dash--in the last footnote, number 7, on Micromégas. To be consistent with the rest of my editing it should read

'He was eight leagues tall, or 24,000 geometric paces of five feet each'—this equates to almost 146,000 feet/44,448 metres.

It should be an en dash rather than an em dash and it should have spaces around it. That's our house style.

Thanks, Gno. I was looking for the house style guidelines on this and couldn't find them.

If that is the style, I should go back and redo all the em-dashes I put in without spaces (that's my style). Can you send it back to me?

And can you post the link to those guidelines please?

Ah, found the reference in A41950046

I had looked at this and failed to find the bit about en dashes.

It does take a lot of steps to get there, and when you do, dashes are mentioned without their own header (though hyphens get one) under 'Grammar and punctuation'. I suppose I was just impatient when I looked first and didn't spot that.

I don't think it's possible to return it to you now you have returned it to the Eds, Recumbentman. As the entry now awaits "Final polish", the dashes will be taken care of during that process.

Thanks very much for your time and effort sub-editing this for me,

Galaxy Babe

I'm feeling foolish about this. Virtually all I did, apart from a few grammatical tweaks, was to mess up your correct dashes.

There's no need to at all,

I've been a sub-ed and a Curator a long time, so my entries are practically perfect (Guide-ML and style-wise) when they hit PR. I can't get semi-colons right thoughand I can't sub-edit my own entries so your input is much appreciated

GB you are a

You say the nicest things.

All the volunteers are