I simply do not care. I will just use - (the one next to zero on the keyboard) everywhere. There are a grand total of zero situations where using one in place of the other hampers information reconstruction or reading comprehension (although the latter is subjective, I suppose)
How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
241–250 of 492 posts
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Chicago Manual of Style has no spaces, so there’s some variation at least.
CMOS is not journalism, so it's not variation from the GP?
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#243Here'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…
I've always wanted an array or object with range keys like: arr[0–2] = 123; if(arr[1.5555]>122){}
In Python it’s a colon.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#244Here'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
The last paragraph of the article also addressed the subjective nature of spacing around the em dash:
> Spacing around an em dash varies. Most newspapers insert a space before and after the dash, and many popular magazines do the same, but most books and journals omit spacing, closing whatever comes before and after the em dash right up next to it.
As far as the selection detail, did you mean that you replace an em dash used like a comma or parenthesis with spaces and an en dash for specific highlight performance issues? Surely the spaces and an em dash would alleviate the selection highlight behavior and not muddy the waters of when to use an em vs. an en dash?
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Emily Dickinson wept—
Ha, good point, and an interesting question: What kinds of dashes did Dickinson intend?
It's a hard one to answer: We could look at published Emily Dickinson books from the time, but did Dickinson really pay that close attention to or have that much control over the type?
We could look at Dickinson's actual personal documents, but if they were handewritten, distinguishing dashes could be difficult even if there was intention there.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#246Super- or subhuman intelligence can be identified in the pre-Mason–Dixon line era.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#247The problem with en and em dash is that
1) they are too hard to type.
2) using them without surrounding thin space or hairspace breaks the horizontal rhythm and draws unnecessary attention to the punctuation; but thin and hair spaces are equally hard to type
3) Most people write markdown with mono space fonts, making these dashes and spaces indistinguishable.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#248The eternal debate between minimalism and the ornate.
There's room for both: when presentation matters I use them; when it doesn't, I don't.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#249Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lack of em dash usage in popular culture speaks more about typical people than it does about whether a text's author was an LLM. In fact, the average person has never even noticed—let alone considered—that the em dash exists. If they've read for 20+ years, they've seen at LEAST hundreds of them. Imagine being an NPC (a human bot), flattering yourself with the thought that people who understand the language are la…
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024 and 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level[1]. “The average person” isn’t really a high bar, unfortunately. 1: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s...
Is this a legitimate institute? The linked article offers many statistics and even financial figures but cites no sources or studies. There is a “TOLL FREE” (capitalized) phone number in the website footer, and the comments are full of prostitution ads.