Same-line control city signing practices

[1995hoo]

(separated by a hyphen rather than a dash because the text is so crammed in)

How many people know the difference?  (Edit: apparently not Brandon, see next post)  For that matter, do the Standard Alphabets specify separate hyphens and dashes?

I will pick on the difference between an em dash and an en dash, so I admit I might be too attuned to these issues for purposes of road signs.

I'm pretty sure there is probably some difference in the standard alphabets, though, because I've noticed that on signs for the Franconia—Springfield Parkway (a road near my house) VDOT frequently uses an em dash to separate the two words, as contrasted with the hyphen the DC DOT used on the sign I linked before. Some of the signs do use en dashes instead, and an en dash is grammatically the more correct mark for that sort of name. Either one looks better than a hyphen.

[Central Avenue]

For reasons beyond me, ODOT also does same line control cities for I-670 from I-71 SB. Dayton-Airport.

I'm pretty sure it's because they forgot one when they first put the sign up.  IIRC, Dayton/Airport is a patch.  Actually, they may have changed it more recently so it just says Dayton, with an airport icon added to the top of the sign.  

They actually have one of each through there now:
"Dayton" with a separate airport icon
"Airport/Dayton" on a single line

[thenetwork]

There is one on I-77 South before Exit 136 that has the same-line control city.

That's the first time I've seen ODOT use both Akron AND Canton as the Control City.

BTW, One of my biggest Pet Peeve in the air is when I fly into the Akron-Canton Airport, and nearly every person who works for the airline refers to it as the "Canton-Akron Airport", either because the airport itself is closer to Canton than Akron and/or because the airport's code is CAK.  But you'll never hear a local call it that.

[roadfro]

It is interesting in that, to me, using a forward slash (with a space on either side) would be the more clear way of separating two different destinations if they had to appear on one line. However, MUTCD guidance states that the hyphen be used for this separation, as the forward slash ("solidus") is intended to be used only for fractions.

[6a]

For reasons beyond me, ODOT also does same line control cities for I-670 from I-71 SB. Dayton-Airport.  Nowhere else in the city (discounting Dublin-Granville Rd)

My wife is from California and roads like Plain City-Georgesville just played hell with her brain for a while.

[agentsteel53]

For reasons beyond me, ODOT also does same line control cities for I-670 from I-71 SB. Dayton-Airport.  Nowhere else in the city (discounting Dublin-Granville Rd)

I thought "Dublin-Granville Rd" was the name of a single entity, not the town of Dublin and the Granville Road, but rather a single road with a hyphenated name.

[vtk]

Semantically, a hyphen makes sense if two cities are considered to be a single destination, like Bloomington-Normal, or even Dallas-Ft Worth if you're far away from it.  If two otherwise-unrelated destinations are to be put on the same line -- like Louisville & Lexington -- I think semantically a semicolon, ampersand, or the word "or" would be best.  Visually, a nice long dash (whose width is equal to or greater than the capital letter height) or a big dot are probably best at conveying the separation of the two destinations.

Really though, how often is it advantageous to put two destinations on the same line?  You're going to potentially make the sign at least 8 feet wider that way, versus 2 feet taller by using two lines.

[vtk]

For reasons beyond me, ODOT also does same line control cities for I-670 from I-71 SB. Dayton-Airport.  Nowhere else in the city (discounting Dublin-Granville Rd)

I thought "Dublin-Granville Rd" was the name of a single entity, not the town of Dublin and the Granville Road, but rather a single road with a hyphenated name.

That's correct.  Dublin—Granville Rd (most-correctly written with an en dash) is a single entity. 

[agentsteel53]

That's correct.  Dublin—Granville Rd (most-correctly written with an en dash) is a single entity. 

is there BBcode for en dash?  because I sure am not looking up the Unicode for it 

[roadfro]

is there BBcode for en dash?  because I sure am not looking up the Unicode for it 

Don't know about BBcode, but on a Windows machine...

En dash — Alt+0150
Em dash – Alt+0151

[vtk]

is there BBcode for en dash?  because I sure am not looking up the Unicode for it 

Don't know about BBcode, but on a Windows machine...

En dash — Alt+0150
Em dash – Alt+0151

The results of this of course depend on how well the website and the browser handle these non-ASCII characters.  From these last few posts, it looks like it works well enough.

[Scott5114]

On a system with X (and the xorg.conf edited to enable a compose key), it's Compose + --- for an em dash and Compose + --. for an en dash.

[1995hoo]

is there BBcode for en dash?  because I sure am not looking up the Unicode for it 

Don't know about BBcode, but on a Windows machine...

En dash — Alt+0150
Em dash – Alt+0151

The results of this of course depend on how well the website and the browser handle these non-ASCII characters.  From these last few posts, it looks like it works well enough.

If you can see the dashes in my autosignature, then em dashes at least are displaying properly for you. I've used en dashes in earlier posts in this thread.

[vtk]

Don't know about BBcode, but on a Windows machine...

En dash — Alt+0150
Em dash – Alt+0151

The results of this of course depend on how well the website and the browser handle these non-ASCII characters.  From these last few posts, it looks like it works well enough.

If you can see the dashes in my autosignature, then em dashes at least are displaying properly for you. I've used en dashes in earlier posts in this thread.

The forum seems to be served encoded as ISO-8859-1, which is essentially the Windows Western 8-bit character set.  Furthermore, the FORM elements used on the forum specify that browsers should submit content in that encoding.  I suspect that's the encoding used internally by the forum software.  The only potential problem is that there's a chance some browsers (particularly on non-Windows platforms) might not properly submit content using that encoding, so users of those browsers might not be able to post using (for example) em dashes.  This is why I try to build my content systems to accept UTF-8, as support for that seems to exceed any 8-bit encoding – except perhaps for pure ASCII, but that surprisingly has some caveats when it comes to form content. 

Long story short, while possibly not everyone can post em dashes, everyone should be able to see them correctly. 

Back on topic...

Um...

Oh yeah, I remember several years ago when a chunk of I-70 was under construction somewhere in Columbus.  Heading into town, the EB guide signs for the I-270 SB exit were temporarily patched to read "Cincinnati/Wheeling".  I think the patch was black on orange, even.  The font was probably wrong, but I don't think I was aware of correct signage fonts yet...  I could also nitpick the use of Cincinnati as a control city there, but that's for another thread entirely.

[flowmotion]

The forum seems to be served encoded as ISO-8859-1, which is essentially the Windows Western 8-bit character set.  Furthermore, the FORM elements used on the forum specify that browsers should submit content in that encoding.  I suspect that's the encoding used internally by the forum software.  The only potential problem is that there's a chance some browsers (particularly on non-Windows platforms) might not properly submit content using that encoding, so users of those browsers might not be able to post using (for example) em dashes.  This is why I try to build my content systems to accept UTF-8, as support for that seems to exceed any 8-bit encoding – except perhaps for pure ASCII, but that surprisingly has some caveats when it comes to form content.  

This is kinda an esoteric topic, so I won't go into the details.

But it is not a widespread issue because (1) Most modern Mac/Linux font families include the Windows character set and things usually "just work". (2) HTML5 actually requires that ISO-8859-1 documents support the Windows CP-1252 special characters, so if it isn't working, your software is not up to the latest standards.

[ftballfan]

Ludington-Clare on US-31 just east of Ludington

[Kacie Jane]

With the existence of a couple of hyphenated cities (specifically Winston-Salem), I definitely think the slash might be the best solution for most places from here on out.

Either one though is better than "a small space" (i.e. the US 69 sign earlier in the thread)!

It's funny you mention that.  To be honest, I don't think it really makes a difference, and I'm in favor of using a hyphen/dash/what-have-you in spite of (and perhaps in small part even because of) hyphenated cities.

For example, on I-5 in nearby Skagit County, you'll pass two consecutive exits with signs to "Sedro-Woolley" and "Bow-Edison".  The catch?  Sedro-Woolley is a single town, although like Winston-Salem, it was two separate towns long ago.  Bow and Edison are two separate places along the same road, approximately 2 1/2 miles apart.  This being said, I don't see it as terribly confusing, although perhaps it may just be a question of at what point do two cities become "twin cities"?

I think it's been long held (both on signage and off) that a dash is a perfectly acceptable and understandable way to combine two cities, particularly if they're reasonably close.  (However, while I was browsing Wikipedia to confirm this, I found it interesting that you can fly into DFW: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport or MSP: Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.)

[Brandon]

Here's another example, from Illinois:



Funny enough, there's a sign to the side with an arrow (just like the above) that has only Peru and Mendota.

[SidS1045]

there's always Massachusetts's famous "N.H.-Maine" on -495 (and, I think, I-95 too).

...and on I-90 at the I-495 and I-95/MA-128 interchanges.