1073941 - Stop using the em dash by default in localizable web site titles

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(www.mozilla.org :: L10N, defect)

Description

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

By default, web site titles on localizable web pages often contain 2 or even 3 parts, which are separated by an obviously hardcoded em dash (—). Example: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products shows "Mozilla Products — Built by us, for the Web — Mozilla." Knowing some locales don't use the em dash at all but the en dash or perhaps some other character instead, it would be nice to find a way to not use them for localized pages, either by making the separator or the entire string localizable.

Sidenote: it may also be wise to check if the em dash is the proper character to use as a separator in English. Note that American and British English appear to have different rules on using it, though that may be covered by this bug’s request.

Comment 1

[Peiying Mo [:CocoMo]]

Due to the redesign the mozilla.org site and the style change for #57, this is no longer an issue. Close the bug.

Comment 2

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

I agree about this no longer being an issue for this website’s _title bars_, but perhaps it would have been better to file (or rephrase and reuse) the bug as a general request to "Stop using hard-coded em dashes for any web page title and content in general" in order to achieve that as a general rule, possibly to include in a style guide.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ for instance still uses a hard-code em dash for the DT quote, and there is no way for localizers to avoid that. Some localizable strings including em dashes do exist in other files, and it would be nice to see them for any string. Do you agree with that? Or did you refer to an existing or recent style guide change that covers it?