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

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 4:31 AM UTC

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……

Post by mattl » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 4:32 AM UTC

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.

Post by handoflixue » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 4:32 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #187

lucgommans wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by mmooss » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 4:34 AM UTC

ogurechny wrote: post #159

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.

Just install a proper keyboard layout with proper typography support once. It is maddening that the whole world uses typewriter keyboards with some facelift in the era of Unicode and even blasphemous full color emoji font rendering. What has changed in decades? Windows logo key, power keys, media keys, IE and Outlook logo keys — all Microsoft's fancies. So initially IBM made some ad hoc decisions on what keys would b…

Post by phlakaton » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 4:37 AM UTC

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.