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Regarding the Em Dash

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Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#131

Post by cup-of-tea »

KC8ZKF wrote: post #56
CharlesW wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I got into the habit of double spacing because it does make the TeX source code easier to read (and I often do just read that, rather than the typeset document), and also because emacs has a number of sentence based commands for which it uses the double space as a sentence delimiter.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#132

Post by xorcist »

cryptonector wrote: post #47
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 find space-less em dashes hard on the eyes. The extra whitespace around the em dash helps denote the "aside-ness" of the remark.

Many people do. Use en-dash with whitespace.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#133

Post by jfk13 »

Symbiote wrote: post #115
lwhi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

In my opinion — and let's face it, much of this is just a matter of opinion! — a normal space is too much. Try thin space (U+2009) for a more subtle effect. (The exact result may depend on your font, however.)

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#134

Post by xentronium »

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.

Depends on typography traditions. In Russian, em-dash in the middle of a sentence is always typeset with short spaces. We also rarely use en-dashes (I think there are maybe two cases when it is allowed: in date ranges like 1940–1945 and as a bullet point in lists).

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#135

Post by dmurray »

Symbiote wrote: post #117
cryptonector wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nato (but VAT) has been preferred by the Guardian style guide [0] for a long time. I've never understood it.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#136

Post by evanb »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #130
ReidZB wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works in TeX as well: one dash is a hyphen, two an en dash, three an em dash.

And a fourth is the minus symbol, in maths mode $-$.

Nothing makes me crazier than seeing hyphen1 in TeX documents. hyphen != minus!

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#137

Post by quietbritishjim »

dragonwriter wrote: post #28
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 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 land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash.

> Horrible;

I strongly disagree. A closed em-dash—like this—looks jarringly like the words either side of it are closely related, as if by an extra-long hyphen. For example, in t previous sentence, “this—looks” visually appears to me to be a single compound entity, which is ironic considering that the intention was to make them appear especially separated. The ideal spacing is a thin space on each side, but I find a full space totally acceptable.

Of course, worst of all is asymmetric spacing, like this— yuk.

Edit: I just realised a closed em-dash doesn't look too bad in these comments because there is a very slight space either side of it, but I still stand by the above. A closed em-dash is much worse in documents typeset in TeX, where the dash without manual spacing practically touches the letters either side of it.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#138

Post by hn_643 »

ashark wrote: post #53
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.

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 t…

> 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

Really? Every program on OSX seems to use some weird combination of CMD/SHIFT/CTRL/OPT keys but I don't know if I've ever seen a single Windows/Linux program use the Windows key.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#139

Post by acdha »

Freak_NL wrote: post #123
quadrangle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The compose key and its composition tables are a thing of beauty — you can even compose an uppercase ß (ss) these days: ẞ (SS). It's such a shame that neither Windows nor MacOS (or the mobile operating systems for that matter) provide this feature out-of-the-box.

Mac OS has supported a similar system since the classic era – for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key leads with Compose + ~ + n = ñ, which is Option + ~ + n on Mac OS.

https://forlang.wsu.edu/help-pages/help-pages-keyboards-os-x...

The newer system is simply holding down keys to see accented variants which feels very natural on touchscreen devices but is slower than keyboard shortcuts if you know them.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#140

Post by open-source-ux »

dragonwriter wrote: post #28
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 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…

You can put a thin space before and after the em dash. This space is narrower than a normal letter space.

Example with a normal space:

The quick brown fox jumps over — and, sometimes, under — the lazy dog.

Example with a thin space:

The quick brown fox jumps over — and, sometimes, under — the lazy dog.

This Smashing Magazine article discusses spaces in more detail. At the bottom of the article is a list of different spaces and their corresponding HTML entities:

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/10/space-yourself/

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