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Regarding the Em Dash

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Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#211

Post by WovenTales »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #210
WovenTales wrote: post #200

I love dashes. I do tend to avoid ems for parenthetical remarks – for those, I'll use spaced ens – but I do definitely use the longer for interjections and (roughly) semicolons, as the article describes. Where I break from convention is that, if they're marking an interjection or other interruption, I will put a space in on a single side of the dash— like so —to better demarcate the logical flow. Then again, I also p…

I realise this is nothing more than my opinion, but I have to tell you that asymmetric spacing around a dash looks awful.

Thanks for that, actually! You're the first to comment on the aesthetics rather than the "incorrect" usage. My thinking is that the dashes are part of the pragmatics of the primary, wrapping phrase, and don't actually interact with the inner one—they are therefore bound to the first and separate from the second. Whether or not it's a good look, the fact that doing so much better signposts the parenthetical makes it worth it, right? And that spacing rule is actually almost the same as with ellipses, though I'm definitely with you on that taking a while to look good to me as well.

Do you think it's just being unused to that layout, or is there some deeper issue to how it looks?

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#212

Post by Symbiote »

cryptonector wrote: post #193
Symbiote wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm OK with that. I'm in the U.S., and I comprehend my non-American English-speaking colleagues, but I don't try to be like them. The same should go the other way around. We're NOT going to standardize on one of the flavors of English -- variety is good.

Recognize, however, that it does annoy those of us outside America when something very straightforward — like the ö in my friend's name, or writing £ — doesn't work. Imagine moving to a hypothetical country with no letter C, and being told your name "must" be kryptonektor, or instead seeing %ryptone%tor.

It's fairly common for a lot of computer software to standardize on American English and American conventions, yet several of these are unique to under 1% of the world's population. This morning, a new installation of Microsoft Outlook asked for a location and timezone, yet still showed the weather for Washington DC in Fahrenheit above the calendar. The weather location was easily changed, but not the units. A well-known messaging app I installed last week shows my location as "K%©benhavn", for someone in Russia no character in the location is intelligible. A receipt from a restaurant in Europe has only about a 95% chance of correctly showing €, and maybe a 1/50 chance of showing the date in the wrong order. On an international flight between two non-English places, it's fairly common for the in-flight display to show miles and Fahrenheit with English, which I don't understand, and kilometres and Celsius with (say) Arabic, which I can't understand either — along with the other 99% of non-American connecting passengers.

I have no issue with the minor spelling differences and changes of idiom.

So yes, we mostly understand the Americans, except their measuring units and paper sizes.

> The same should go the other way around.

But it often doesn't.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#213

Post by gshubert17 »

wtallis wrote: post #42
gshubert17 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I have been looking for that. But it's command-hyphen for en-dash, and shift-command-hyphen for em-dash on my Mac.

Why do you have command and option reversed? Are you using a non-Apple keyboard?

This is curious.

I use an Apple keyboard with a numeric keypad on the right. From left to right on the lowest row, the keys are Control, Option (Alt), Command, Space, and so on.

I was using LibreOffice 5.1.6.2 to try this. It looks like LibreOffice has remapped the keys.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#214

Post by gshubert17 »

Bud wrote: post #102
gshubert17 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I have been looking for that. But it's command-hyphen for en-dash, and shift-command-hyphen for em-dash on my Mac.

It emphatically is NOT shift-command-hyphen on ANY Mac. It's shift-option-hyphen, and has been since the Reagan Administration.

You're right. It is as you describe on my 2015 MacBook Air running 10.12.6.

But on my 2009 iMac running 10.11.6, using LibreOffice, option-hyphen did produce an en-dash, but command-hyphen did. So either LibreOffice or some configuration setting somewhere on this Mac is responsible for this nonstandard behavior.

Thanks.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#215

Post by therealdrag0 »

combatentropy wrote: post #81
pash wrote: post #77

The em-dash is like the AK-47: it feels good in one’s own hand, but one is distressed to find it everywhere one looks. If you find yourself wielding either often, you should stop and ask yourself: “Am I the bad guy?” Just minutes ago I read two articles demonstrating the horror of a world awash in em-dashes, both in The New York Times [0, 1]. One may empathize with the writers, if one is so inclined: they have employ…

Midsentence injection deserves its own thread. Is it a trend, or am I just noticing it more? It's hard on the brain, because you have to hold the first part of the sentence in memory while you take in the interruption. Your example is great, the one about the security vulnerability. Your revisions are much better in all cases. It's actually my first impulse to inject these midsentence clauses. Is it because of a shor…

Your comment reminds me of the book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" by Steven Pinker.

I highly recommend it. He talks about the effect of sentence flow on the brain and how sentences can be simplified.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#216

Post by abritinthebay »

cryptonector wrote: post #206
abritinthebay wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about allowed there. It’s about communication & understanding. You are free to break whatever convention you like. It will just effect your communication clarity. Understanding that (and how and why too) will help you be more effective. It’s no different to saying “you can program it that way if you want but understanding the conventions & methods other people use may help you have more readable and efficient…

Really. Whitespace around em dashes hurts my ability to communicate? Please explain.

How are you failing to understand "the reader will expect certain conventions so following those will make it easier to communicate effectively with them"?

This is not a hard concept to grasp.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#217

Post by yesenadam »

WovenTales wrote: post #211
quietbritishjim wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise this is nothing more than my opinion, but I have to tell you that asymmetric spacing around a dash looks awful.

Thanks for that, actually! You're the first to comment on the aesthetics rather than the "incorrect" usage. My thinking is that the dashes are part of the pragmatics of the primary, wrapping phrase, and don't actually interact with the inner one—they are therefore bound to the first and separate from the second. Whether or not it's a good look, the fact that doing so much better signposts the parenthetical makes it w…

There's a lot in what you say. Not crazy at all. They only looked awful for about 10 seconds hehe. But sure, using them to help show the meaning is a good idea. I've recently learnt to write a = b*c + d, spacing assisting clarity. Carry on, I support you in your chosen mission.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#218

Post by dfee »

erichurkman wrote: post #37
dfee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah man, … as a single character is the best. I believe on a Mac it’s shift-alt-; I’m on my iPhone right now so I can’t verify my muscle memory.

Easier: … is ⌥+; Shift+Alt+; is Ú

You're right. It's actually just alt+;

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#219

Post by ivansavz »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #137
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 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 separat…

The en-dash with spaces instead of em-dash without spaces is the predominant convention in French texts.
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