Many Everythingians like to use the Em Dash—like right here. A wonderful character, everybody's favorite hyphen-like typographical implement. And, also, part of a problematic HTML character entity.

You see, many Everythingians who use the Em Dash in their writeups put it in using this character entity: — . Unfortunately, this does not work on Netscape, resulting in a very ugly writeup on some browsers.

While browsing E2 using Netscape, I've seen quite a number of —es lying around in writeups. I don't think many noders realize that this entity only works on some browsers. I'd like to bring it to the attention of the Everything2 community that:

Fortunately, a better alternative exists. Simply use ——it will give you an Em Dash that will work with any browser. Yeah, it's a pain to remember, but no one wants an ugly writeup, do they?

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N-Wing says re: The — problem: It is a bad idea to do something because of 1 crappy browser (which NS4 really really is). View node_id=1060666 for m_turner's take on it (which I agree with).

N-Wing has a very good point here. m_turner's writeup on this issue makes several important points—including that codes such as — are extraordinarily difficult to read. I'm also inclined to agree, in conflict with my earlier opinion stated above.