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Regarding the Em Dash

themillions.com

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Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#111

Post by anjbe »

vostok wrote: post #110
anjbe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretentious? Come on. There’s nothing inherently wrong with spacing your em dashes. It’s even part of the AP style guide. I personally wrap them in thin spaces (U+2009), except in fixed‐width fonts, where I use an en dash with full spaces instead.

In fixed-width fonts, do you literally use an en dash (U+2013) or do you use hyphen-minus (U+002D)?

I use UTF‐8 except when I have reason to stick to ASCII. (One such situation is public mailing lists, where people’s misconfigured mail clients constantly butcher any non‐ASCII characters when replying.)

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#112

Post by Dylan16807 »

seandougall wrote: post #64
cryptonector wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hyphens is plenty. Three is calling attention to it. One is pitiful. While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). In ASCII that's two spaces. We're not animals. Let's behave accordingly.

> While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). This convention started with typewriters, and typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts. This is also why HTML takes the liberty of reducing whitespace down to a single space character unless you go out of your way to use an  .

> typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts

People like to say that but it's never been explained to my satisfaction. Spaces are twice as wide in a monospace font. Why would you use more spaces when and only when you have a longer space?

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#113

Post by Dylan16807 »

quadrangle wrote: post #65
cryptonector wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hyphens is plenty. Three is calling attention to it. One is pitiful. While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). In ASCII that's two spaces. We're not animals. Let's behave accordingly.

Multiple hyphens are awful — learn to use your compose key!

It would help if you didn't have to install special software to get a compose key.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#114

Post by anjbe »

seandougall wrote: post #64
cryptonector wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hyphens is plenty. Three is calling attention to it. One is pitiful. While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). In ASCII that's two spaces. We're not animals. Let's behave accordingly.

> While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). This convention started with typewriters, and typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts. This is also why HTML takes the liberty of reducing whitespace down to a single space character unless you go out of your way to use an  .

In TeX, inter‐sentence spaces are visibly wider than normal spaces, including those that come after abbreviations. And when justifying text, they stretch faster than spaces between words.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#115

Post by Symbiote »

lwhi wrote: post #109
combatentropy wrote: post #20

The em dash is the most beautiful punctuation mark, all the more because it is rare --- and it is best kept that way. Certainly a sentence with more than two is imparsible. In fact, more than a few in a whole article is probably getting annoying. It's like the exclamation point in that way. Once you discover the em dash, it is hard to restrain yourself. But I'm trying to come back to the comma. It does its work witho…

I'm incredibly happy that the em dash is gaining the attention it deserves. However, if honest—I am also a little upset that the good people the comments section are tending towards placing white-space around each dash and the text it forms an abutment with. This space is not needed.

The space is conventional in Britain. Without the space looks strange to me.

(Android users — try long pressing the - key in the punctuation menu.)

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

seandougall wrote: post #64
cryptonector wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hyphens is plenty. Three is calling attention to it. One is pitiful. While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). In ASCII that's two spaces. We're not animals. Let's behave accordingly.

> While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). This convention started with typewriters, and typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts. This is also why HTML takes the liberty of reducing whitespace down to a single space character unless you go out of your way to use an  .

> This convention started with typewriters

No, an em-width space between sentences with either half-em or third-em width space between words was typesettig convention for a long time before typewriters, and is where the triple (later double) spacing in typewritten manuscript convention came from.

Typesetting convention evolved to narrower and eventually mostly settled on equal-to-interword spacing after that typewriter convention evolved from earlier typesetting convention.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#117

Post by Symbiote »

cryptonector wrote: post #90
gnicholas wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what of sentences that end with an abbreviation that ends in a period, like "U.S."? If it's just one space after a period, it's impossible to know that the sentence has ended? I realize in books or published articles this can be typeset in a smart way to make it distinguishable, but what about in ordinary writing?

Exactly. "I live in the U.S. I am happy." requires a bit more cognitive work to parse if spaces after sentence-ending periods are not wider. EDIT: For completeness, here is that same text with an extra space: "I live in the U.S. I am happy." -- see how much easier that is to read? Sure, it's not that big a deal, but it's definitely kind to the reader.

British: I don't live in the US. I am happy.

Full stops aren't generally used in abbreviations here, Mx Cryptonector.

Though there's a more recent trend to write "Nato" rather than NATO, which annoys me for the inconsistency that arises. Plenty of people pronounce VAT as one word, or PAYE, but these are usually left in capitals.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#118

Post by Symbiote »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #113
quadrangle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple hyphens are awful — learn to use your compose key!

It would help if you didn't have to install special software to get a compose key.

On Linux, you don't.

> setxkbmap -option compose:menu

For example. There will be a dialog somewhere too.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#119

Post by Symbiote »

cryptonector wrote: post #87
quadrangle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple hyphens are awful — learn to use your compose key!

I like sticking to ASCII when I stick to English. (Of course, when I write in other languages, I use UTF-8.)

That doesn't work outside America, where accents are often retained (café, façade, naïve) and £ or € is often needed.
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