Typography - dashes

This will probably bore many of you, so I'll keep it as short as possible, and stick to linking to topical info, rather than quoting.

That prefaced, I've been inspired to research — and now attempt to properly use — typography correctly (in this case, the dash and quotes).

Ever notice when typing in MS Word, that sometimes when you type a dash and follow it with a word, MS Word will replace your hyphen with a longer looking dash?
Or, perhaps you were looking at your "Character Map" program in Windows, or one of the Wingdings fonts, and noticed that there are a number of different looking dashes?

Maybe you've noticed that this "quoted text" (produced by the double quote on the keyboard) is different than this “quoted text”

Apparently, in typography, there are clearly — or perhaps not so clearly — defined rules on when a type of dash/quote is intended to be used. Who knew? I always thought that the ones that are available on the keyboard are the right ones.

So how and why did I go about looking at this?

Well, as you know I'm a programmer, so I often will use special characters for my work. Additionally, I'm always reading articles, and using tools to make my programming easier.

Today, I came across this: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/02/typography-keyboard-layout-download-now/

“Really cool”, I thought, since many of those characters I use for the websites I make. As I read about the tool, I was feeling slightly reproached, since the blog author begins by making clear the habits of good designers. Apparently, I have some bad habits!

Anyway, this lead me to look into perhaps the most odd and confusing of the rules: the rules regarding dashes. Where did I turn? Why, to my good friend, The Wiki, of course!

If you're so inclined, read this here about the dash, em-dash, en-dash, and minus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

Interesting stuff... at least I think so.