# How to get double dash or double hyphen in bibitem?

I am using article class. I have a bibliography by using \bibitem. I want to give page numbers of the form "81--90" where the double hyphens should be made into a (long) dash.

When I try this, LaTeX makes it into funny symbols (so 1--10 becomes something like 1âÀS10). How I get it to work? I tried wrapping it in curly braces but no luck.

### Example

\bibitem{RD} Rodrigues L. 1999 On a Darcy--Sobolev problem. \textit{Contin. Mech. Thermodyn.} \textbf{11}, 181--191.
\bibitem{simon}Simon J. 1986 {Compact sets in the space $L^p(0,T;B)$}. \textit{Ann. Mat. Pura Appl.} \textbf{146}, 65--96.


I am using pdflatex (under TeXmaker) and I writing out the bibitems by hand (using \begin{thebibliography}{9}.

I am also using a style file given to me which unfortunately I cannot distribute, so I cannot post a useful MWE.

• Which TeX engine do you use: pdftex, xetex, or luatex? How are the \bibitems generated -- by hand, or with BibTeX? If you're using BibTeX, which bibliography style do you use? Which font do you use? Could you describe the nature and look of the 'funny symbol' you're getting instead of the en-dashes? It would be most helpful if you posted a full MWE (minimum working example, starting with \documentclass and ending with \end{document}) that generates the problem you describe. – Mico Dec 16 '14 at 15:39
• @Mico thanks for your attention. I have edited my post. – christop Dec 16 '14 at 15:47
• Which font do you (or the style file which you're not at liberty to distribute) load? – Mico Dec 16 '14 at 15:48
• It seems palatino. I found: "\usepackage{palatino} \usepackage[scaled=0.85]{helvet}" – christop Dec 16 '14 at 15:51
• Something like âÀS means a Unicode character; you probably typed the en-dash character instead of a hyphen – egreg Dec 16 '14 at 16:19

(Too long for a comment, but not really a solution.)

Based solely on the code you've posted or given specific hints about, the following output is obtained with pdfLaTeX. Three normal en-dashes are generated, but no "funny characters". Do you get the same output if you load the package-which-you-are-not-at-liberty-to-share?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{palatino}
\usepackage[scaled=0.85]{helvet}
\begin{document}
\begin{thebibliography}{9}
\bibitem{RD} Rodrigues L. 1999 On a Darcy--Sobolev problem. \textit{Contin. Mech. Thermodyn.}
\textbf{11}, 181--191.

\bibitem{simon}Simon J. 1986 {Compact sets in the space $L^p(0,T;B)$}. \textit{Ann. Mat.
Pura Appl.} \textbf{146}, 65--96.
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

• Thanks a lot. The problem was I foolishly copy and pasted the page numbers from MathSciNet. – christop Dec 16 '14 at 19:14