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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 (-)

#221

Post by KPGv2 »

mortos wrote: post #189
st_goliath wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And this is different from Japanese's chuuonpu (U+30FC) which is a vowel elongation mark, and it's rendered horizontally or vertically depending on whether the text direction is horizontal or vertical, respectively.

ー

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

#222

Post by handoflixue »

miltonlost wrote: post #108
theelous3 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Length of breath/pause with a longer dash. Read some -- Emily Dickinson poems – you'll find a world ––– of meaning ––– in the millimeter.

Poetry routines breaks grammar rules. A lot of poems rely on very specific white space layouts that you'd never see in writing.

And your example shows how you can just use multiple dashes instead of having three different ones.

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

#223

Post by handoflixue »

california-og wrote: post #209
mvdtnz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-5°C to -2°C post-war - pre-digital era (not a sentence any sane person would use anyway). See sections 10-O - 15-Q Try our New York-London flight connection! (no kind of dash clears this one up without fixing capitalisation).

The last one was a gotcha: it's their newly established York–London flight! Try Our New York–London Flight Connection. Or if it was New York: Try Our New York – London Flight Connection. Note the additional spaces. Agree on the capitalization though.

> Try Our New York – London Flight Connection.

I'd wager serious money that if you put that on a sign and surveyed people, at least in the US, they'd all still conclude it is a "New York" to "London" flight.

What's the use of a communication tool, if it doesn't actually communicate anything to real people?

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

#224

Post by mmooss »

KPGv2 wrote: post #217
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…

> 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!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43501482

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

#225

Post by mmooss »

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.

Someone else said the same. How can that be when most word processors, and at least some phone keyboards, automatically insert em dashes?

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

#226

Post by handoflixue »

milesrout wrote: post #198
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.

i refuse to care about this lowercase letters are all i will ever use i see no possible reason to use the other symbols Suit yourself, but if you refuse to learn basic grammar you will be treated like you are stupid and uneducated. Like it or not, presentation matters. Getting the basics right, including things like spelling, grammar, etc, shows a basic attention to detail without which your services will likely do m…

> etc,

actually it's "etc."

(I wouldn't usually be a pedant, but if you think the difference between "--" and "—" matters, you should probably try to get the basics right too.)

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

#227

Post by lxgr »

mmooss wrote: post #219
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…

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.

>

That one I’d usually parse as a hyphen, as in e.g. well-known. “Word space dash space word” is much clearer, in my view.

> The AP Style Manual, a/the leading source for US journalism

One of the things I can easily get away with by not being a US journalist :)

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

#229

Post by lxgr »

KPGv2 wrote: post #217
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…

> 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!

Better avoid British journalism then, and many other languages on top of that.

It’s very common outside of America, even in English.

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

#230

Post by lxgr »

KPGv2 wrote: post #218
rahimnathwani wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How so? One is the only way to approximate an en or em dash on a typewriter or in a charset that doesn’t have one, the other seems like a workaround of a typesetting bug at best.
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