5 ms·
Which one of these, then, is for minus?
by Aardwolf 4y ago
Which one of these, then, is for minus?
- doubleunplussed 4y agoHyphen. You'll also hear it called "hyphen-minus"
- teddyh 4y ago"Hyphen‐minus" is an ASCII abomination, and should only be used in ASCII‐constrained environments. Hyphen is hyphen and minus is minus: ‐ 002010;HYPHEN;Pd;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;; − 002212;MINUS SIGN;Sm;0;ES;;;;;N;;;;;
- Aardwolf 4y agoThe issue of non-ASCII-constrained environments is that it's still not easily accessible on most keyboards. I do know and use the compose key but it's not the same as having a standard key for it. Trying on a mobile device, long pressing the dash key there suggests 2 dashes (not sure if the second choice is en-dash or em-dash), which is some but that's not the 4 types discussed here.
- teddyh 4y agoIf a character is too difficult to type on some specific system, that is indeed a constrained environment.
- Aardwolf 4y agoDo you know one where it's easy to type? There are many international keyboards but I don't think any has that many dashes. Compose key is the best I think.
- teddyh 4y agoReportedly, a “German standard keyboard according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06” has them: https://unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4984-Unicode-Proposal-9995-V7.pdf https://unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4984-Unicode-Proposal-9995-V7....
- kzrdude 4y agoI was wondering what's better. The document is clearer if we use unicode. But maybe for humans it's easier if we have a limited character set and use context instead. Like this. In plain text, - is a hyphen: twenty-five, -1 In math context - is a minus sign $ (-1)^3 + x^3 $ Where it will be ensured to be rendered as appropriate
- teddyh 4y agoIt’s easier to type HYPHEN-MINUS‐the‐keyboard-key, but text should be displayed using the appropriate glyph, depending on its semantic meaning, which is never HYPHEN-MINUS‐the-glyph. (This discussion is similar to the classic net discussion about TAB‐the‐ASCII‐character versus TAB‐the‐keyboard‐key, with some people having trouble conceptualizing the difference.)
- kzrdude 4y agoGood/bad news: It should be U+2212 MINUS SIGN like this: −1, which is none of the others. It looks better than hyphen: -1, doesn't it? Matplotlib example: https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/text_labels_and_annotations/unicode_minus.html https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/text_labels_and_annota...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bee_rider 4y agoPersonally I’ve always preferred a minus sign closer, like the latter. While the subtraction operator looks better as the former. But I think this is just a calculator-ism that has infected my math syntax. But especially for matrix inversion, the super wide subtraction symbol just looks awful to me. A little calculator style minus symbol is also nice because it’ll clear the matrix more easily…