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How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

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Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#181

Post by sho_hn »

energy123 wrote: post #170
mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

The em dash is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.

My advise is to take pleasure and have confidence in good writing, over misspent energy worrying about things like this.

If you practice your skills, you will reap the rewards.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#182

Post by rahimnathwani »

lxgr wrote: post #165
mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

> EM dashes break things, such as sentences or thoughts Some style guides recommend "space, en dash, space" for this, and I prefer that myself – mainly because some software doesn't treat em dashes correctly as word separators for double click selection purposes. For example, I'm pretty sure that at least some Kindle models would highlight both the word before and after the em dash when selecting one of them, which m…

I grew up in the UK, and have always used space, minus, space.

The first keyboard I used was my dad's typewriter, and I don't recall it having any 'dash' other that the minus sign.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#183

Post by california-og »

theelous3 wrote: post #104
Starlevel004 wrote: post #91

I refuse to care about this. A single dash is all I will ever use. I see no possible reason to use the other two.

Throwing my hat in here. The sub millimeter difference in the length of a dash conveys no additional meaning or clarity. It is impossible to argue me out of this position. It's not like you can reliably write these consistently by hand either without going over the top in length to make it extremely obvious.

Here's some examples where the en dash could make things more clear:

-5--2°C

post-war-pre-digital era

See sections 10-O-15-Q

Try Our New York-London Flight Connection!

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#184

Post by y1zhou »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

AFAIK most computer keyboards don't have em dashes. Rather than hit ALT+0151 every time, I've always just strung along two hyphens, like: -- Absolutely proper and correct use of em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens is, to me, the most obvious tell of the LLM writer. In fact, I think that you can use it to date internet writing in general. For it seems to me that real em dashes were uncommon pre-2022.

A few years back a journal editor maticulously reviewed all dashes in our manuscript and pointed out places where em dashes should have been used. Since then I started noticing different dashes everywhere around the internet.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#185

Post by fastball »

rappatic wrote: post #180

I use em dashes all the time in writing, but unfortunately ChatGPT and co. use the em dash frequently—and most people use the em dash infrequently, not knowing how to type it on a keyboard—so it's starting to make my writing look AI-generated sometimes. I fear it'll have to go the way of words like "tapestry." FWIW, you can type an em dash on Mac with shift + option + hyphen.

I use them as well. For blog posts I suppose I'll need to switch to regular hyphens lest people think all my writing is LLM-spam.

That said, I don't even think you need the [shift] for em dash on Mac – just [option] + [hyphen] works for me.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#187

Post by crazygringo »

lucgommans wrote: post #147
crazygringo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who keeps the 1? You write pages 1,003–4, instead of typing out 1,003–1,004 which is just unnecessary. Works the same with two digits, or even three: pp. 1,899–902. This is standard practice and arguably clearer. I've only ever seen it done with page ranges, though. I'm not sure if it's done with year ranges? E.g. 1984–5? Or 1989–92? You work with page ranges constantly in academia, I just don't see year ranges much…

Literally never seen this (wish I could grep all comments I've ever replied to) and I do not understand what makes you say that it's clearer when it's dropping information, making it relative rather than a fully qualified number In speech, it's common, and misunderstandings are usually not a problem (if you're not monologuing on a recording) because someone will just ask; but in writing it looks like the range is the…

I think you're just not used to it.

Quick, tell me how wide this range is, just as an order of magnitude:

285368737954–285368783645

Would be a lot easier if I only included the range at the end which had actually changed, wouldn't it?

That's why it's clearer. Now obviously that was an extreme example, but it's also easier to see at a glance that 1,387–9 is just three pages, as opposed to 1,387–1,389.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#188

Post by contact9879 »

fastball wrote: post #185
rappatic wrote: post #180

I use em dashes all the time in writing, but unfortunately ChatGPT and co. use the em dash frequently—and most people use the em dash infrequently, not knowing how to type it on a keyboard—so it's starting to make my writing look AI-generated sometimes. I fear it'll have to go the way of words like "tapestry." FWIW, you can type an em dash on Mac with shift + option + hyphen.

I use them as well. For blog posts I suppose I'll need to switch to regular hyphens lest people think all my writing is LLM-spam. That said, I don't even think you need the [shift] for em dash on Mac – just [option] + [hyphen] works for me.

That's an en-dash

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#189

Post by mortos »

st_goliath wrote: post #151
mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

Also, not to be confused with "一", which is a different thing entirely……

This one is U+4E00, CJK Unified Ideograph-4E00. So it's a common character between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This should be "one" in all three. And it does technically look a little different than a dash: https://unicodeplus.com/U+4E00

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#190

Post by pama »

rappatic wrote: post #180

I use em dashes all the time in writing, but unfortunately ChatGPT and co. use the em dash frequently—and most people use the em dash infrequently, not knowing how to type it on a keyboard—so it's starting to make my writing look AI-generated sometimes. I fear it'll have to go the way of words like "tapestry." FWIW, you can type an em dash on Mac with shift + option + hyphen.

Embrace the confusion with the AI—it’s a sign of progress!
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