Friday, March 11, 2016

punctuation - May en-dashes be used in sports scores?

The accepted answer to the authoritative question When should I use an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen? currently has this to say regarding the en-dash:





An en-dash is use to connect values in a range or that are related. Saying "in years 1939–1945" or "New York beat Los Angeles 98–95" are both examples where an en-dash should be used (as I did explicitly in the examples). A good rule of from here is when you're expressing a "to" relationship.




The portion that I have bolded above is not a usage I had seen before. I was under the impression that the en-dash should only be used in the case of a range. In the above, two distinct scores are being described, not a range that includes the values "96" and "97".



The "rule of from" [sic?] presented above allows its usage in that case ("98 to 95") but is broader than I believe in. Taken to the absurd, this might suggest that I could rewrite "just between us, man-to-man" as "just between us, man–man". :p



What say you: must an en-dash be used only for a range of values, or may it be used more permissively?

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