space before and after emdashes

Question

I am typing a document in French and I need to automatically get a fine space (unbreakable) after opening emdash and before closing dash. ---\, blahblah\, --- is not very good...

How can I do that.

Best, Fred

Depending on what blahblah semantically is supposed to mean I'd define a new macro or environment \newcommand\thought[1]{---\,#1\,---} and then use \thought{blahblah} — cgnieder, Nov 16 '15 at 11:47
BTW: the example in your post has thin spaces in addition to normal ones… — cgnieder, Nov 16 '15 at 11:59
You can adapt the code from here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/22419/disallowing-line-break-before-dash-en-dash-and-em-dash/22423#22423 — Ulrike Fischer, Nov 16 '15 at 16:19

Romain Picot · Answer 1 · 2015-11-16T11:41:08.840

2

You can use LaTeX unbreakable space ~:

~-~Blahblah~-~

This will create a space and force the TeX engine to link the part before and after the tilde to be on the same line of text produced.

You can create a command to not type them:

\newcommand{\foo}{~-~}

For a thin space you can use \, without space around:

\,-\,Blahblah\,-\,

With newcommand:

\newcommand{\bar}{\,-\,}

edited Nov 16 '15 at 11:41

answered Nov 16 '15 at 11:32

Romain Picot

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Thanks.But ~ generates a normal space, not a thin one... – Fred_O Nov 16 '15 at 11:35
@Fred_O see my edit for a thin space. – Romain Picot Nov 16 '15 at 11:41
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isn't it usual to use an en-dash (--) rather than a hyphen between the spaces? – barbara beeton Nov 16 '15 at 14:01

space before and after emdashes

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