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How do I typeset the name of this site (TeX.SE) in (La)TeX?

And, what is the name of this site? I thought TeX - LaTeX was technically correct, but another user suggested something similar to \TeX{} -- \LaTeX.

This question grew out of this other question about citing this site properly.

Related questions (this will help with keeping everything consistent and preventing misinformation):

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  • As you can notice, the citation from the math.SE site suggests "Mathematics" as the title, not "Mathematics (dash/hyphen) Stack Exchange", therefore the analogy is surely "TeX - LaTeX" and the only remaining thing is to ensure yourself that a dash should be a dash even if it's typeset as a hyphen somewhere.
    – yo'
    Feb 18, 2013 at 12:29
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    It's worth noting that many of us just call it 'TeX - Stack Exchange' without the LaTeX part.
    – Joseph Wright ♦
    Feb 18, 2013 at 12:32
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    @tohecz Oh, I agree that the "SE" part isn't part of the name proper. I would write something like "the 'TeX - LaTeX' site of the Stack Exchange Network". (Note that the space between "Stack" and "Exchange" is intentional, even though it's styled without the space in some places. And, while we're at it, whether to capitalize "Network" is another question; I think this site does it both ways in various places, so I'd go with the "longer-name version" (with capitalized "Network"). But this is secondary to the question of how to typeset "TeX - LaTeX".)
    – Lover of Structure
    Feb 18, 2013 at 12:32
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    I think it worth bring out something from the context of this question. It arose from how to acknowledge this site, therefore the typeset name should clearly indicate this site. So I would ensure that the "StackExchange" part was in there somewhere.
    – Andrew Stacey
    Feb 18, 2013 at 13:05
  • @AndrewStacey Yes, except I'd mention "Stack Exchange" either in a comment of my citation or in parentheses or possibly as a separate bibliographic field (similar to a series name or publisher name in a citation). I would think that the "SE" part isn't part of the name proper, but this is just my own usage tendency/intuition.
    – Lover of Structure
    Feb 18, 2013 at 13:14

2 Answers 2

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Certainly, the "horizontal bar" between the words is not a hyphen semantically, since you never put spaces around a hyphen (maybe with some special exception). Therefore it's semantically a dash. Another question is whether short en-dash -- or long em-dash ---. I would go for the shorter one. The result is then one of the following:

\TeX~--~\LaTeX\@
\TeX~--~\LaTeX{}
\TeX~--~\LaTeX\ % there is a space after the last backslash

They all should produce the same output and it really depends only on which do you prefer. It seems preferable to deny breaking of the page name.

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5
  • About plain vs bumpy: If some academic writes a paper about "Various pieces of software used for document authoring: Word, InDesign, and LaTeX", the correct citation of that paper's title surely contains the word LaTeX, not the bumpy \LaTeX. So this is why I think the answer is not completely obvious and requires discussion. Judgment from the higher-ups would be even better :-)
    – Lover of Structure
    Feb 18, 2013 at 13:01
  • About the choice of hyphen: In US typesetting it'd be TeX---LaTeX, but I think this looks ugly. TeX -- LaTeX is British style but looks much better typographically. (See also my answer about this topic.) My opinion is that it'd be too much of a change to convert a hyphen to an em-dash. (Conversions between hyphens and en-dashes or between en-dashes and em-dashes are what one normally sees.) And this site's "About" page uses (typographically unfortunate) "TeX - LaTeX" with a hyphen.
    – Lover of Structure
    Feb 18, 2013 at 13:07
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    Ties rather than spaces? I'd say \TeX~--~\LaTeX{}, or with thin spaces, maybe. There's no need of \@, because LaTeX adds it automatically in the logo: try texdef -t latex TeX to see.
    – egreg
    Feb 18, 2013 at 13:19
  • One alternative to consider: \TeX--\LaTeX (if a variant without spaces or with a dash is preferred, I'd very strongly vote for an en-dash).
    – Lover of Structure
    Mar 19, 2013 at 0:33
  • I think linebreaks around the en-dash are okay, but this is just my personal preference.
    – Lover of Structure
    Mar 19, 2013 at 0:33
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I chanced upon this question, and I daringly decided to voice my opinion in favour of

\DeclareRobustCommand*{\TeXSXFullName}{%
    \TeX \kern .13333em --\,\LaTeX\ Stack Exchange%
}
\DeclareRobustCommand*{\TeXSXAbbrev}{\TeX.SX\@}

Here’s the output of the first command, compared to that of the other answer:

Comparison of the results

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