I figured it out. Jeremy Hughes writes:

Hi all,

Dashes in composed words do not hang when hanging punctuation is used. When a line break falls after `whisky' in this sentence:

the repellent whisky|-|craving woman

the dash doesn't hang. To make the dash hang I resort to this:

the repellent whisky-\allowbreak craving woman

Is there a better way?

Added the following definitions: \definetextmodediscretionary {} {\hyphenliketextmodediscretionary{–}{–}} \definetextmodediscretionary - {\hyphenliketextmodediscretionary{-}{-}}

A related question: I want |<| and |>| to allow breaking on either side.

\zerowidthspace---\zerowidthspace

works when placed directly in the text, but not when used as the definition of `leftsentence' in the `setuplanguage' command. How do I change this behavour?

And these ones: \setuplanguage [en] [leftsentence={\allowbreak—}, rightsentence={—\allowbreak}] Now it's all peachy :-) Jeremy