endash and emdash in Sphinx

Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date and not representative. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

PyBlosxom uses Sphinx for documentation now. I was having problems with using -- for em-dash and it not showing up like an em-dash in the HTML output.

The docutils FAQ says to use the actual unicode character for emdash. I don't really want to do that because I'm not sure about what happens when the source files are opened up by a non-unicode-friendly text editor.

Turns out that doesn't matter because Sphinx allows -- for en-dash and --- for em-dash. Is this something that should get added to the Sphinx documentation?

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