Em dash makes keyphrase usage not count

Hi Yoast folks. I’ve noticed for some time that Yoast has difficulty with em dashes in text. Specifically, it fails to recognise a keyword if it’s followed or preceded by an em dash—I assume because em dashes are used without a space, so Yoast thinks it’s part of the word.

This is especially frustrating because em dashes are quite useful in headings, leading to false negatives for “include focus keyphrase in subheadings” and so forth.

(To be clear, I am talking about a keyphrase without punctuation, used in a contact where it connects to an em dash. I’m not trying to put an em dash within a keyphrase.)

I realise I could “fix” this by adding a space, but em dashes never call for spaces, so that’s not really an acceptable workaround. It would make the text look kind of ugly, or at least unprofessional. I assume this is more of an oversight or unintended consequence of the keyword counting code.

Anyway, I hope you’ll fix it so those of us using this rather appealing punctuation mark will get proper keyword counts!

A few references for correct em dash usage:
https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/09/computer-editing-tip-em-dashes.html
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes/faq0002.html
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/why-you-should-love-the-em-dash/

• This topic was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Fox Lee.
• This topic was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Fox Lee.