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Regarding the Em Dash

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Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#51

Post by cryptonector »

alanfalcon wrote: post #32
dfee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put spaces around mine. I’m not sure if that’s the norm — let alone correct usage — but it tends to help readers differentiate it as a non-compound word structure.

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

Yeah? So? First, it does not say that one must not use spaces around em dashes. Second, so what if it did? This is English we're talking about. The main rule of English is that there are no rules. If you want a rule for English: it's to speak and write in such a way as to be understood -- who would fail to understand the whitespace around an em dash?! Not I. But missing whitespace around an em dash can be confusing -- is that a compound? did the author mistype a hyphen? Ugly. Whitespace is nice. Use it.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#52

Post by KC8ZKF »

paulcole wrote: post #36
KC8ZKF wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an unapologetic curmudgeon who uses two spaces. Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. I went thirty years between learning it and thinking about it, and then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable.

> then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable. Outside of newspapers, it was always unfashionable. I mean just look at a book, magazine, or even this site.

Hacker News eats the second space. Which is fine. I'm not saying that typesetters should show two spaces between sentences, rather the edict against typing two spaces between sentences is wrong. Two spaces even has a (small) amount of semantic information. i.e. "This is a full stop and not part of an acronym or radix point, etc."

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#53

Post by ashark »

gk1 wrote: post #11
jasoncrawford wrote: post #3

Tip: On a Mac, you can type an em-dash with shift-option-hyphen. (An en-dash is just option-hyphen.)

There are a few reasons why I switched from PC to Mac, but there's only one reason I'll never switch back—it's this em-dash shortcut.

The em-dash shortcut, system-wide remapping of CAPS LOCK to CTRL from the GUI in about 15 seconds flat, a top-level modifier key (command) that's respected enough by developers that it mostly retains its "I belong to the OS and, therefore, to the user, not to you, mere program" character, and a de facto standard package manager that leaves the base system the hell alone, almost never breaks, and can install many of the binary packages I want.

Also if I went back to Linux I'd have to figure out how to remap my window controls to Spectacle's defaults, which'd probably take forever or end up being impossible in the window manager I settled on or whatever.

It's the little things.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#54

Post by mikeklaas »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #10

Maybe I'm weirdly old fashioned, but I try to stick to ascii whenever possible - which means whatever character is stuck in the middle of this sentence. Ditto for the ellipsis, since it's not like three trailing periods at the end of a sentence can be mistaken for anything else...

You might consider using two hyphens if you can't bear to use the unicode character.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#55

Post by dragonwriter »

colanderman wrote: post #34
dragonwriter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash. Horrible; if you are going to set a dash open and use it for the purpose of an em-dash, use an en-dash. Setting an em-dash open is ugly as hell. > I prefer to ASCII-encode my em dashes with three hyphens. Two-hyphens is conventional for an en-dash. Since a set-open en-dash serves the same purposes as an em-dash, a lot of people just use that instead of t…

I agree with you but I think you have mistyped "em" as "en" is several places. EDIT: Fixed now.

> I agree with you but I think you have mistyped "em" as "en" is several places.

Er, yeah.

That was just ugly.

I fixed (hopefully all of) those.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#56

Post by KC8ZKF »

CharlesW wrote: post #38
KC8ZKF wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an unapologetic curmudgeon who uses two spaces. Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. I went thirty years between learning it and thinking about it, and then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable.

> I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. It's still considered fine to do that when using monospaced fonts, just as using the prime symbol (') instead of an apostrophe (’) won't raise any eyebrows in that scenario. When your goal is to make something that looks like it was typeset by someone with an awareness of typographical conven…

"When your goal is to make something that looks like it was typeset by someone with an awareness of typographical conventions..."

If by that you mean typesetting, I agree. Typing and typesetting are two different activities.

LaTex, for example, will typeset both ".(one space)" and ".(two spaces)" into the same white space that is somewhat larger than one typed space and somewhat smaller than two.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#57

Post by ashark »

KC8ZKF wrote: post #25
bmpafa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Raging against double-spaces post-period was all the rage a few years back[1], so I'm sure it raises quite a few curmudgeonly hackles. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...

I am an unapologetic curmudgeon who uses two spaces. Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. I went thirty years between learning it and thinking about it, and then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable.

I learned the basics on Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, which must have assumed a monospaced font because it taught the double-space-after-period style. Took years before I learned that wasn't always how you're supposed to type, and another couple years after that to fully break myself of it.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#58

Post by ashark »

cryptonector wrote: post #51
alanfalcon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

Yeah? So? First, it does not say that one must not use spaces around em dashes. Second, so what if it did? This is English we're talking about. The main rule of English is that there are no rules. If you want a rule for English: it's to speak and write in such a way as to be understood -- who would fail to understand the whitespace around an em dash?! Not I. But missing whitespace around an em dash can be confusing -…

There are rules to making oneself well- and easily-understood generally, and to appearing to be an educated writer to other educated people. If you care about neither of those things then sure, there are no rules.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#59

Post by xemoka »

alanfalcon wrote: post #35
gk1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few reasons why I switched from PC to Mac, but there's only one reason I'll never switch back—it's this em-dash shortcut.

I had to program this and other special characters—notably •, ™, and ®—as an autohotkey script on my work PC. I was going insane. I already had autohotkey going to reverse the direction of Windows’ stubbon backwards scroll anyway. (Once I used so-called “natural scrolling” for a week it became impossible to understand why anyone would choose anything else.)

Hey, you can do that reversal with a registry edit too eh: http://www.vvse.com/blog/blog/2012/02/27/reverse-scrolling-o...

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#60

Post by s4vi0r »

weeksie wrote: post #7

I used to be an em dash over-user but have calmed down quite a bit in that department over the last several years. My current idée fixe is the archaic ellipsis as (over) used by Céline . . . I just can't bring myself to go with the single character scrunchy version.

I cringe physically every time I see an ellipsis, they're like the calling card of the tech illiterate 30-40+ year old.

I don't know why they like them so much... But they end... Every sentence or thought... Like this...

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