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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 (-)

#351

Post by tines »

rmunn wrote: post #340
krick wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually only your post that made me realize people don't normally put spaces around em dash. In French, Russian and a bunch of other languages proper typesetting is to use em dash as a standard dash character, and you always put spaces around them. So I did it in English as well, for many years now. (I also now looked up and found out that in Spanish, apparently, you are supposed to put space only on one side o…

I also put spaces around em dashes. It looks wrong—subtly wrong—to me to have the words glued together around the dash. It looks right — completely right — to me to have the dash standing on its own, as if it was a word in its own right.

The reason not to do this is observable in your post on my phone. The spaces cause the word wrapping algorithm to leave a dangling dash at the end of the line which looks ugly. Omitting spaces prevents the word break.

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

#352

Post by bangaladore »

dskhatri wrote: post #47
bangaladore wrote: post #26

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.

There are regular folk who tend to be pedantic with their writing. I'm not sure this is a good test of whether text is generated by LLM. Consider that some may use LLMs to correct spelling or grammar, and the LLMs may often edit an en dash to em dash.

To be clear, It's essentially impossible to know if a given text is autonomously LLM generated (a bot on social media for example) or is the result of revision of real human effort.

To what extent that distinction matters, I'm not sure.

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

#353

Post by bangaladore »

jyunwai wrote: post #213
culi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know that writes a lot, especially for copy or product design, seems to use em dashes more heavily. I've even seen a Drake format meme where he is shaking his head at parantheses, commas, and colons but—finally—nodding in approval at the em dash. I wonder if it's a more recent phenomenon.

Em and en dash usage is officially part of style guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style [1], so it's often a work requirement for many writers and editors to use them in writing. This is why these kinds of dashes are everywhere in newspaper and magazine articles. Eventually, people learn to include them out of habit—especially as most people see them as aesthetically nicer than a simple hyphen (-). [1] https://ww…

Exactly. If I see an Em/En dash in a publication of really any kind, I don't think twice. Because that's the traditional context for them. Professional writing.

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

#354

Post by venusenvy47 »

hunter2_ wrote: post #211
harrall wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I can't get this to work in Powerpoint. It's funny, I clicked on this thread because I was struggling with trying to make an "emdash" in Powerpoint yesterday and couldn't find the correct search term for the "long hyphen" that I was looking for.

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

#355

Post by velcrovan »

Here's my AutoHotkey script for making my favorite punctuation hotkeys on my Windows laptops the same as my Mac:

    #-::Send("–")     ; Win+- = en-dash
    #+-::Send("—")    ; Win+SHIFT+- = em-dash
    #]::Send("‘")
    #+]::Send("’")
    #[::Send("“")
    #+[::Send("”")
    #;::Send("…")
    #+>::Send("→")
    #+
edit...downvoted, why? weird

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

#356

Post by Starlevel004 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #193
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 take this advice like "do not use a preposition to end a sentence with" and "pay close attention to 'much' and 'many'". Personal preferences from the 1800s taken as gospel by grammatical extremists, to the point where they're taken as some kind of solid rule in a vain attempt to forcefully shape language to a personal preference. There are cases when you want to follow certain guidelines, for sure. If you write for…

> Personal preferences from the 1800s taken as gospel by grammatical extremists, to the point where they're taken as some kind of solid rule in a vain attempt to forcefully shape language to a personal preference.

This is also true of "less" and "fewer". I use "less" everywhere.

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

#357

Post by layer8 »

BoumTAC wrote: post #282
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…

I'm not a native English speaker, but don't you use the ";" in English ? To me, it feels like it is the same purpose as the EM dashes. And I discovered the EM with ChatGPT, I've never seen it before.

A semicolon connects, whereas an em-dash creates more of a pause and therefore separates. In addition, em-dashes can be used in pairs to create a parenthesis, which semicolons can’t. I think with time you will appreciate the difference.

https://thenarrativearc.org/blog/2020/2/4/epic-grammar-battl...

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

#358

Post by nkotov »

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.

Recently ran into this. Didn't realize it was that obvious.

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

#359

Post by JadeNB »

opello wrote: post #244
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 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…

> 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.

It's funny that they omit to mention the possibility of setting it off with a thin space ' ' or hair space ' ' (those are the thin-space and hair-space Unicode characters, though they show up full width for me), which I thought was preferred typographic practice.

(On Googling, maybe the reason that they don't mention it is that I was imagining it; I can't find any evidence for my belief.)

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

#360

Post by [deleted] »

tines wrote: post #351
rmunn wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also put spaces around em dashes. It looks wrong—subtly wrong—to me to have the words glued together around the dash. It looks right — completely right — to me to have the dash standing on its own, as if it was a word in its own right.

The reason not to do this is observable in your post on my phone. The spaces cause the word wrapping algorithm to leave a dangling dash at the end of the line which looks ugly. Omitting spaces prevents the word break.

[deleted]
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