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The official name of this site is "TeX - LaTeX", which is written with a hyphen at most places, this is obviously incorrect. I understand that in a page <title>, this is a common practice in HTML. But I think it could be corrected in the text/body of the About page, and the en-dashes &ndash; put there. If I didn't oversee anything, it is 4 times in that page.

Related questions (this will help with keeping everything consistent and preventing misinformation):

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Outside of formal writing, I don't think think the careful distinctions between the use of hyphens and kinds of dash really apply, and even in formal writing, in this case I don't think you will find much in the way of clear guidance at all from style guides: here the equivalent of a running head is formed from a category (tag) and a title, a case where I think Chicago offers no sharp rules, and uses a colon for the task (see, e.g., 16th, p.843). So I disagree that it "is obviously incorrect".

A purely pragmatic consideration against the change: dashes are larger than hyphens, and space is typically at a premium in browser tabs. We would see a tiny little bit less of the title when we have many browser tabs open.

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  • Sorry for being unclear. My issue is not the page title, but the body.
    – yo'
    Commented Feb 19, 2013 at 12:12
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    @tohecz: Ah, sorry for being slow-witted. That deals with the pragmatic consideration, but the punctuation still doesn't look "obviously incorrect" to me: compound names are made of smaller names either with hyphens ("William Rees-Mogg"), or en dashes ("Einstein--Podolsky paradox"). The issue is as much one of typography as lexical grammar, and as TeXnicians, we are surely not expecting HTML to do a great job. Commented Feb 19, 2013 at 12:30
  • I expect to squeeze out of HTML the best it can do without a serious over-cost ;)
    – yo'
    Commented Feb 19, 2013 at 13:02

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