En-dash instead of two short dashes for page range in bibliography

Question

Since I'm working with the fontspec package, using the Segoe UI font

(actually, let me include a secondary question here: which font would you prefer for a scientifical paper on influenza, keeping in mind both aesthetics and readability? Segoe UI or Segoe UI Light? If you please, you can recommend me another font for my paper, but as you see, I prefer "clean", modern, sleek fonts. I tried the Flanders Art font (since our Flemish government started using this one and I'm pretty fond of it), but it's just not compatible enough; the Segoe UI package is very compatible. Here are meaningless excerpts of an example document: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rhs1J.png for the normal version and https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Y8Vw.png for the light version)

the bibliography will show "pp. 94--98" instead of "pp. 94-98". Is there a way I can remove one hyphen? I tried to remove one from the bibliography itself, xetex'ing the main file, running bibtex and twive xetex again, but this didn't work.

Can someon help me on both my primary and secondary question?

Thanks!

Michael

Part of the source code that might be interesting. Don't mind any Dutch comments:

BIBLIOGRAPHY FILE (BIBINFLU.BIB)

@Article{Met78,
Author = {Metz, Charles E.},
Title = {Basic principles of {ROC} analysis},
Journal = {{S}eminars in {N}uclear {M}edicine},
Volume = 8,
Pages = {283-298},
year = 1978
}
@book{Wel03,
author = "Stefan Wellek", year = 2003,
title = "Testing Statistical Hypotheses of Equivalence",
publisher = "{Chapman \& Hall/CRC Press}",
address = "New York"
}
@Article{pmid23462501,
   Author="Kuchar, E.  and Nitsch-Osuch, A.  and Karpinska, T.  and Kurpas, D.  and Zycinska, K.  and Wardyn, K.  and Szenborn, L. ",
   Title="{{P}andemic influenza in the 2009/2010 season in central {P}oland: the surveillance study of laboratory confirmed cases}",
   Journal="Respir Physiol Neurobiol",
   Year="2013",
   Volume="187",
   Number="1",
   Pages="94-98",
   Month="Jun"
}

MAIN FILE (INFLUENZA.TEX)

\documentclass[12pt]{report}
\usepackage[left=1.5in,right=1.5cm,top=2cm,bottom=2.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[dutch]{babel}       %vertaling naar Nederlands
\usepackage{graphicx}           %insluiten van afbeeldingen
\usepackage{framed}             %omkaderen van tekst
\usepackage{url}                %weergeven van url's
%\usepackage{makeidx}           %index maken, overbodig in casu
\usepackage{lmodern}            %beter lettertype
%\usepackage{nomencl}           %nomenclatuur, overbodig in casu
\newlength\longest
%\usepackage[toc,nonumberlist]{glossaries} 
                                %package voor glossarium
%\makeglossaries                %registreren van de entries
%\include{glossarium}
%\makeglossaries                %voor de zekerheid
%\printglossary[title=Verklarende woordenlijst] moet nog ingevoegd worden op de gewenste plaats van het glossarium!             
\usepackage{fancyhdr}           %mooiere hoofding en voettekst
\usepackage{tocloft}            %controleert ToC
\usepackage{ragged2e}           %controls voor uitlijning
\usepackage{fontspec}           %voor ander lettertype
\setmainfont[
  %SmallCapsFont={TeX Gyre Termes},
  %SmallCapsFeatures={Letters=SmallCaps},
]{Segoe UI Light}       
%\usepackage{hyperref}          %voor referentielinks       
\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}
\usepackage{natbib}
%\bibliographystyle{apalike}
\usepackage[nottoc]{tocbibind} % Bibliografie in ToC
\bibliographystyle{merlin}
\usepackage{titlesec}
% to change titles font family
\usepackage{titling}
%%% declare fonts and set some formats
% fontspec to use non-latex with xetex
\usepackage{xunicode}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
                                %Flanders Art Serif voor titels
% font declaration and title settings
%\newfontfamily\headingfont[]{Flanders Art Serif}
%\titleformat{\chapter}[hang]
%  {\huge\headingfont}{\thechapter}{20pt}{\Huge}
%\titleformat*{\section}{\LARGE\headingfont}
%\titleformat*{\subsection}{\Large\headingfont}
%\renewcommand{\maketitlehooka}{\headingfont}
\titleformat{\chapter}[hang]{\huge\bfseries}{\makebox[2.5em]{\thechapter\hfill}}{0pt}{}
\begin{document}
\bibliography{Bibinflu}
%\bibliographystyle{apalike}
%\bibliographystyle{bibliodutch}
\end{document}

Answer 1

As for your primary question: use the Ligatures=TeX when selecting the font; for example, \setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Segoe UI}. You can use Unicode en dash (–; U+2013) directly instead, which I find better than using the old TeX ligatures.

As for your secondary question: I can recommend wholeheartedly Gentium. It is free, libre, comprehensive and extremely readable and beautiful.

If you want to use bold and/or small caps, it’s a little bit tricky: Gentium Plus contains small caps, Gentium Basic contains bold glyphs, and both are available for download here. Using fontspec and XeLaTeX one can enjoy both worlds and fake bold small caps (this is not possible in LuaLaTeX, as far as I know). This is a way to make it possible:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[BoldFont={Gentium Basic Bold}]{Gentium Plus}
\fontspec[FakeBold=2.5]{Gentium Plus}
\DeclareFontShape{EU1}{Gentium Plus(0)}{bx}{sc}{<->ssub * Gentium Plus(1)/m/sc}{}

\begin{document}
hello \textbf{hello} \textsc{hello} \textsc{\textbf{hello}} \textbf{\textsc{hello}}
\end{document}