I know, and I appreciate it.  My last paragraph was more general, not aimed at you in particular.

languagehat - 11 January 2013 11:34 AM

Of course people miss dash errors, just as they do spelling errors and every other kind of error—even “highly experienced proof-readers.” That is neither here nor there, and doesn’t alter my point.

Sorry, I should have made my point more clear. The highly experienced copy editors had to look hard before agreeing with me. It just wasn’t at all obvious even to them, without a good scrutiny, what length of dash was being used.

I don’t know what to say, except that you must know a bunch of highly experienced copyeditors who are terrible at their job.  I cannot imagine any copyeditor I know having the slightest problem telling a hyphen from an en dash from an em dash.  That’s one of the fundamentals of the job.

languagehat - 14 January 2013 06:46 AM

I don’t know what to say, except that you must know a bunch of highly experienced copyeditors who are terrible at their job.  I cannot imagine any copyeditor I know having the slightest problem telling a hyphen from an en dash from an em dash.  That’s one of the fundamentals of the job.

Well, there we are.