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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 (-)

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Em dashes are very similar to semicolons. You use em dashes if your related sentence is in the middle of another sentence, and semicolons if it's at the end. They're frequently used in skilled and professional grade writing.

So as not to mislead anyone, the parent is mostly incorrect:

Here's an example sentence: Semicolons must have independent clauses—phrases that could form a full sentence on their own—on both sides of them; they are essentially alternatives for periods. Em dashes don't require independent clauses on either side.

In the italicized sentence,

* phrases that could form a full sentence on their own is not an independent clause but is valid between em dashes. on both sides of them, after the em dashes, is also not an independent clause. (The em dashes function like commas or parentheses here.)

* The parts before and after the semicolon are independent clauses. You could replace the semicolon with a period and you'd have perfectly valid grammar. I just chose to connect the two sentences a bit more.

I don't know if you can use em dashes as the parent comment describes, connecting three independent clauses:

* My favorite fruit is peaches—they are very sweet—I eat them all summer.

I think the above is wrong; it should be one of the following:

* My favorite fruit is peaches—they are very sweet—and I eat them all summer.: The last section is a dependent clause made by "and", not an independent clause.

* My favorite fruit is peaches—they are very sweet; I eat them all summer.: One both sides of the semicolon are independent clauses; I could replace the semicolon with a period.

Maybe there are examples I'm not thinking of? I infer that the rule might be that the punctution following the em-dashed clauses should be the punctuation that would have been used without the em-dashed clause, but that's based on very limited evidence.

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of anti-intellectualism is the perfect antidote for those who claim that improper grammar is nothing more than evidence of language "evolving."

I think many grammar rules are not intellectual but just randomly evolved conventions. E.g. some English language rule says that a comma or ending period of a non-quoted sentence goes inside the quotes if there's something quoted at the end of that sentence. That rule feels anti-intellectual to me, as if there's some misunderstanding of how hierarchical placement in one-dimensional space works (since something that's…

Spelling used to be more fluid and up to the writer/printer. Printers would also use different spellings as a mechanism to change the line width and otherwise format text to their liking.

https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html

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

#435
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.

Many people don't use semicolons (;) in English but many do, and they are certainly part of correct grammar.

Semicolons are generally alternatives to periods, when you want more connection between the two sentences. Like periods, semicolons must have two full sentences—that is, what could be full sentences—on either side of them; the potential 'full sentences' are properly called independent clauses. (A dependent clause needs the rest of the sentence to form valid grammar; it can't function on its own. For example, in this paragraph's first sentence, when you want more connection between the two sentences is a dependent clause. Often they follow commas.)

Another use of semicolons is for lists in a paragraph where one of the list items has a comma in it (similar to the parsing problem for CSVs where some records contain commas): I only like wine; beer, but only ales; and orange juice.

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

#436
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Fortunately we have troves of her handwritten documents; all of her poems were first printed posthumously. To me, she's using the punctuation as pacing or tonal markers as opposed to ligatures ("I'll clutch— and clutch— " vs "I'll clutch-and clutch-"). Many publishers style these marks as longer than normal m-dashes for that reason, which makes sense seeing as they are rarely used as asides. I interpret her marks— as…

Great comment. Thank you!

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

#437
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been doing this for purely aesthetic reasons my whole life. Style guides be damned, I hate connected em dashes.

The good thing about style guides is that they’re guides, not laws :) That’s one thing I really like about English: There’s no central authority decreeing what’s right and what’s wrong top down, and it feels like there is some room for individual preferences and experimentation. Very refreshing, compared to e.g. German, which has more than one semi-official authority gate keeping “correctness” in speech and writing.

In fairness, especially in the Anglo-Saxon dominated world post-WWII, English was under no threat to be swamped by German or French words.

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

#438
post #340
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.

Grammar nasi but isn't it "It looks right — completely right, to me — to have the dash standing on its own"...

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

#440
post #134

Today in “typesetting before we had typewriters”: … At least we have dedicated O/0, and l/1 keys now. But we still see a lot of "straight" quotes instead of “those smart quotes Microsoft Word likes to generate”. And dashes. Did you know there is a dedicated ellipsis character? This is often set with slightly more space between dots than ..., and it by definition never wraps across a line between those dots. You still…

I hate smart quotes because it's super weird to use the «French» and „German“ quotation marks.
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