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cherylw93186297
Participant
September 17, 2020
Answered

En Dash reverts back to hyphen when exported to PDF

  • September 17, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 1646 views

My InDesign (v 15.1.2) document clearly shows thtat I have inserted an en dash (–), but when I convert my document to an intereactive PDF, the en dash reverts back to a hyphen.  I generally create en dashes with the shortcut, but because of the issue I'm having, I also tried creating it via type> insert special character>hyphen and dashes>en dash. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening and how I can maintain the en dash in the PDF? Thanks in advance for any replies/solutions!

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Correct answer Eugene Tyson

It might be a font issue, not all font glyphs are embeddable in PDFs - it's unusual, I've never seen this before, so can only assume that the en dash is not part of the embeddable font set - so it reverts to the hyphen.

 

You could try changing the en dash font to something like Arial or Myriad Pro or something to see if that fixes it. Then you will know if it's a font or a program error.

4 replies

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pureland_4841
Participant
December 29, 2024

 encountered the same issue. You can resolve it by using the 'Yu Gothic UI Semibold' font to insert the dash.

    E
    Community Expert
    Eugene TysonCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    September 18, 2020

    It might be a font issue, not all font glyphs are embeddable in PDFs - it's unusual, I've never seen this before, so can only assume that the en dash is not part of the embeddable font set - so it reverts to the hyphen.

     

    You could try changing the en dash font to something like Arial or Myriad Pro or something to see if that fixes it. Then you will know if it's a font or a program error.

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    cherylw93186297Author
    Participant
    September 17, 2020

    Further to my dilemma, the thumbnail in the document files shows an en dash but the moment I open the PDF–no en dash! Due to a deadline, I was forced to be creative. I saved the file under a different name, inserted a text frame for the first word, created a line with the line tool, then inserted another text frame for the second word. Backyard technology at its best!

    Randy Hagan
    Community Expert
    Randy HaganCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 18, 2020

    So, you haven't tried to remedy the original problem? And since you worked around this instance, you don't need any help anymore?

    Randy Hagan
    Community Expert
    Randy HaganCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 17, 2020

    Don't know for sure, but my most common guess is that maybe a font you're using doesn't have one.

     

    A good way to test would be to set something with the default Minion Pro font. I know that font has one. Save the test, then export an interactive PDF and see what happens. You may also want to go to the Advanced PDF Export Options and set and in the Fonts section change the Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than: edit box to 0% and see if that makes a difference

     

    Another thing you can try is to open the interactive PDF in Acrobat DC and try to use the Edit PDF tools to change it there and see if you get any different result. If the whole font is embedded, that might work; if it's subsetted, you likely will not.

     

    Please let us know what happens and we'll go on from there.

     

    Randy

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