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.
me too, do not think it makes a different in actual writing, like handwriting.
How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
251–260 of 492 posts
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#252Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#253Earlier 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.
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!
In my region at least, -5 ~ -2°C, or -5°C ~ -2°C.
If the something is making people confuse, we replace it with a suitable substitution. Re-educating people is really just last resort. Is there anything keeping us from changing it other than ego?
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#254AFAIK 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.
This test feels biased by the fact that, like others have said, macOS provides keyboard shortcuts. For example, I'm only Gen Z and yet have tried for many years to use the proper dash characters in the right places, which is made much easier by virtue of being on a Mac. Of course, I guess it's entirely possible—even accounting for OS—that this test remains statistically useful. It makes me kinda sad that my (very muc…
Windows does too now via Windows+. which opens the "emoji keyboard" but you can switch to the "symbols" tab to see unicode. It does have multiple dashes in the quick access bar at the top or you can search.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
That has nothing to do with being on a Mac. Em-dashes and the compose-key work fine on Linux, and Android has them under the '-' of the on-screen keyboard when long-pressed. (Windows probably has some way, but those are rarely discoverable.)
I disagree, there is absolutely no easy way to do it on Windows. You can install a third party program that emulates the compose key but on macos it "just works". And I think that makes a difference for 95% of users
Hit Windows+. click on the "Symbols" tab and they're right there under general punctuation.
Released back in 2019 for Windows 10.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#256minus (US negative) enters the chat..
The correct minus sign looks a lot clearer than a hyphen-minus when printing out negative numbers, especially at small font sizes. I have in the past written code to convert them.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#257Earlier 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
Aside from the solutions other people have mentioned, if you have often-used symbols, you can set up a text replacement in keyboard settings. For instance, I have :x: for the multiplication sign.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#258Earlier 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.
> 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 :)
It’s quite hard to mistake an em dash for a hyphen in a proportional font.
self-fulfilling
self—fulfilling
One of these looks very, very wrong.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 :)
It’s quite hard to mistake an em dash for a hyphen in a proportional font. self-fulfilling self—fulfilling One of these looks very, very wrong.
I agree, although I still prefer spaces between —.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#260I refuse to care about this. A single dash is all I will ever use. I see no possible reason to use the other two.
uh, really? i really like using em dashes -- for some reason, it feels "better" in my head than using something like a comma or a semi-colon.
Then why didn't you use an em dash?