TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
It's an understandable extension/conflation of two standard conventions,
and if there are a lot of these en dashes, I'd say leave them alone (as
long as they were used consistently). If there are just a few, you
should have them corrected if you have time.
The principal use of the en dash, as I'm sure you realize, is to replace
a preposition (usually _to_) or a conjunction. The compositor's
proofreader may be interpreting hyphenated names as having some sort of
prepositional or conjunct relationship. (Of course the fact that people
refer to them as hyphenated names ought to be a hint, right?)
A second use is to connect a prefix to a phrase, as in pre?World War II
(where I typed an en dash, but I don't know how well it will come
through the listserv). If the proofreader has guessed that this has to
do with proper nouns, rather than with the phrase structure, then
assigning en dashes to the compound names would be a natural error.
HTH,
Dick
Danielle DeVoss wrote:
>
> This is a minor editing question, but... I just received proofsheets from
> my typesetter and noticed that they changed all the hyphens in compound
> last names to en-dashes. For example:
>
> Jane Doe[en-dash] Smith
>
> instead of
>
> Jane Doe-Smith
>
> I looked in the manual I typically use (American Psychological
> Association, 4th ed.), but there weren't any recommendations regarding
> this.
>
> Is this a new convention? Anybody know?
