[thesis swamp] today. I have learned.

[kaberett]

-- alright. So. There is a thing that *really* annoys me about a lot of journals, right, which is that they provide negative numbers with, as the leading glyph, −. Notably, this is not -, and Even More Notably (this being the source of my frustration) it is not a glyph that is, by default, interpreted as a minus sign by spreadsheet programmes. Where, you know, I want to copy data. From tables. To wrangle.

Here, then, are my discoveries:

1. It's all the fault of siunitx; and, worse,
   
2. if you ask about this on stackexchange, you get a bunch of comments and replies earnestly informing you that this is the correct symbol, actually, why would you want to replace it with a dash, what kind of abomination--

Comments

[alexseanchai]

while the ideal solution would obviously be better spreadsheet software, I feel it is worth noting that the formal notation for some gene names has been changed because that was easier than convincing Microsoft to fix Excel

[kaberett]

QUITE.

[booksarelife]

Oh I remember reading about that!

[momijizukamori]

On one hand, I respect that Excel was designed to be a general-purpose spreadsheet software and that catering to specific niche needs like this is really out of scope. On the other, it REALLY wants to turn everything into dates.

[watersword]

Oh noooooooooooooooooo.

[vass]

Well, then. It's good to know who your enemy is. I guess.

[ewx]

I don't think the "- is a hyphen" people are quite right; the formal definition is "hyphen or minus sign". But I'm coming from a position of long-standing annoyance at the people who insist there are a zillion different kinds of dash and anyone who uses the wrong one is a bad person.

[kaberett]

HA. Thank you. This does in fact make me feel much better (and I was not going to get around to looking it up myself, because: thesis swamp). Even as one of those people who will, in their own writing, use different kinds of dashes for different things. ;)

(The most annoying part is, I think, working out how much I care about consistency -- i.e. am I going to go and copy this sodding glyph out everywhere else in running text I need a minus sign, or do I Just Not Care that much...?)

[momijizukamori]

a position of long-standing annoyance at the people who insist there are a zillion different kinds of dash and anyone who uses the wrong one is a bad person.

God, seconded.

(I am also that person that turns off auto-conversion in word processing software because of the non-zero chance I will be using whatever I wrote there in an ascii context. Fucking smart quotes, man)

[silveradept]

That is an exceedingly unhelpful glyph issue made worse by people who are being pretentious about it.

[hilarita]

Fucking Excel. Always so unhelpful at these things.