Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

merriam-webster.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 492 posts

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

#211

Post by hunter2_ »

harrall wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Microsoft Office (maybe jiat Word, but definitely not Windows) has a similar default shortcut.

You don't need a shortcut on Word. You just type two hyphens (--) and Word will convert it to an em dash.

Across the Office suite:

Typing yields an em dash.

Typing yields an en dash.

That this has been true for some 3 or 4 decades makes me doubt all the comments that em dashes are a "tell" of LLM authorship. On the other hand, I guess when we confine this possibility to web content, I can see how people haven't used Office for web authoring lately, and whatever they do use (like web-based content management systems) don't tend to have this feature.

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

#212

Post by fastball »

contact9879 wrote: post #188
fastball wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh yeah, true. They look the exact same in the HN editor haha

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

#213

Post by jyunwai »

culi wrote: post #74
bangaladore wrote: post #26

Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this? ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

Everyone I know that writes a lot, especially for copy or product design, seems to use em dashes more heavily. I've even seen a Drake format meme where he is shaking his head at parantheses, commas, and colons but—finally—nodding in approval at the em dash. I wonder if it's a more recent phenomenon.

Em and en dash usage is officially part of style guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style [1], so it's often a work requirement for many writers and editors to use them in writing. This is why these kinds of dashes are everywhere in newspaper and magazine articles.

Eventually, people learn to include them out of habit—especially as most people see them as aesthetically nicer than a simple hyphen (-).

[1] https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/H...

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

#214

Post by shmerl »

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.

Compose - - - works for M-Dash (KDE / Linux).

For other combos — see /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

See also: System Settings > Keyboard > Key Bindings > Position of Compose key

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

#215

Post by scelerat »

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.

The Mac has had them as part of the standard keyboard layout since 1984. Using Apple kit since then, they have long been burned into my muscle memory:

option-[-] for en dash –

shift-option-[-] for em dash —

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

#216

Post by Aaron2222 »

culi wrote: post #72
alabastervlog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default US English Mac keyboard is so extremely good, and has been the way it is for so long, that I remain baffled that other platforms haven't simply copied it. I came to it relatively late in life and it's one of the reasons I wish I'd started using Macs sooner.

It's pretty decent but the fact that I can't type an arbitrary unicode character has been a huge annoyance of mine since I switched from Windows/WSL to Mac. They have shortcuts for Í, Î, and Ï but not for many commonly used characters like arrows

You can add the "Unicode Hex Input" keyboard layout, which lets you enter BMP characters by holding down Option and entering its code point in hex (similar to the hex entry on Windows). Expanding the Emoji & Symbols pane minitech mentioned also lets you browse by category (e.g. arrows), and you can customise the categories and add a full Unicode character picker (not limited to BMP like the Windows Character Map) there as well.

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

#217

Post by KPGv2 »

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…

> Some style guides recommend "space, en dash, space" for this

Which one does that? I threw up a little in my mouth and wish to avoid such style guides in the future!

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

#218

Post by KPGv2 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #182
lxgr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

space, minus, space is on the same level as manually typing two spaces after a period

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

#219

Post by mmooss »

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…

The AP Style Manual, a/the leading source for US journalism at least, says
Outside of journalism, usually there is no padding, only,
I'm with you: For searches, the spaces make the words easier to parse. Those rules predate computers, I would guess.
Post reply on HN