271–280 of 492 posts
The only problem with correctly using the Em or En dash is that people will automatically assume the text was written by an LLM -_-
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…
I've always wanted an array or object with range keys like: arr[0–2] = 123; if(arr[1.5555]>122){}
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Until ~10 years ago, I used to type two spaces after a period.
I still do, and I maintain that it’s easier to read text with double spaces after periods.
(A nice thing in (La)TeX is that one could follow the "two spaces after a full-stop" rule, which then has the advantage of being an explicit marking for sentence boundaries (which your editor might be able to navigate; Emacs has a convention of assuming two spaces after a sentence-ending '.'), but then the TeX typesetting will take care of making it look right. I lost the habit of actually doing this, for better or worse, except when flycheck/checkdoc/package-linter.el makes me do it for docstrings.)
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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'…
More importantly, typing just a single hyphen minus in this constellation triggers the autoreplace, too. (Typing the double hyphen is only necessary without spaces in order to distinguish between an intentional hyphen and an em dash.)
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More interestingly it is the same highly niche subject from two different websites in two days. HN is...different
This isn't niche, it is the sort of thing every child used to have drilled into them in primary school.
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For those who downvoted this - how does a millimeter of difference in the length of a line matter?
Well-meaning can vary if you don't put spaces around your dashes, and a well—meaning writer wants to ease the job of the reader. ıt might simpıy not matter though, a miııimeter here and there, ı suppose.
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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
Control+Command+Space or Fn+E or Edit > Emoji & Symbols if you know the character’s name. It’s not very convenient for repeated use, but it gets the job done in a pinch.
sigh
Thanks for the suggestions
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.
I've been employing em-dashes extensively since I went on a JD Salinger binge circa 2002. Also, "incidentally", for the same reason. I use "Nb" a lot, from reading a bunch of DFW years ago. Oh, and that very-precise construction he does with "which" all the time, I stole that. Before LLMs, I think em-dashes mostly signaled that you read books and paid attention to details, to the extent they signaled anything.
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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!
Hyphen for hyphen
Option + Hyphen for n-dash
Shift + Option + Hyphen for m-dash