How to prevent automatic conversion of dashes to –

4 comments

1. In your functions.php:

   remove_filter( 'the_content', 'wptexturize' );
   

   And the same for the_excerpt or the_title (if required).

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2. I found a solution: If you are using WordPress, in the beginning of your file single.php add these lines:

   <?php
   remove_filter( 'the_title', 'wptexturize' );
   remove_filter( 'the_content', 'wptexturize' );
   remove_filter( 'the_excerpt', 'wptexturize' );
   ?>
   

   And do your test. I am 99.99% sure that will work because I had the same problem and I fixed it using that lines 10 seconds ago. 😉

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3. Another solution that override the origin function of wptexturize and update all related filters.

   define('EXCERPT_RARELY_2', '{[2}]');
   function wptexturize_custom($text = '')
   {
       $text = preg_replace('!(^|[^-])--([^-]|$)!', '$1' . EXCERPT_RARELY_2 . '$2', $text);
   
       // get through origin filter
       $text = wptexturize($text);
   
       return str_replace(EXCERPT_RARELY_2, '--', $text);
   }
   
   // remove default filter
   remove_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize');
   
   // add custom filter
   add_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize_custom');
   
   // remove default filter
   remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wptexturize');
   
   // add custom filter
   add_filter('the_excerpt', 'wptexturize_custom');
   

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4. I had the same problem as the OP and the solution proposed by @TheDeadMedic almost worked for me.
   But my WP version has several function_something.php files and I had to add this to them all (making sure to add them after the php opening code <?php):

   remove_filter( 'the_title', 'wptexturize' );
   remove_filter( 'the_content', 'wptexturize' );
   remove_filter( 'the_excerpt', 'wptexturize' );
   

   Of course only one of them would be needed if you only want to remove the filter for titles, content or excerpt.

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