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Navigation: Appendices > Typography > Special Characters

em- and en- Characters

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In QuarkXPress, there are many special characters whose name is preceded by the prefixes em- or en-. These prefixes specify the width of the special character that they modify (usually a space or a dash) as follows:

 

em-

A width equal to the width of two zeros or the height of the current font (depending how you have setup the QuarkXPress Document Preferences for the current document).

en-

Half of an em.

 

Note that, contrary to popular belief, the em- and en- prefixes do not refer to the with of the m and n characters. Furthermore it is rarely the case that an en-dash will be the same width as an en-space.

 


Topic 175570, last updated on 13-Dec-2022