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Em dashes are amazing

psychotechnology.substack.com

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Re: Em dashes are amazing

#101

Post by adregan »

adverbly wrote: post #93
eddyg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is (and, increasingly, was) used to signify that a bibliography entry has the exact same author(s), editor(s), translator(s), or corporate author(s) as the previous bibliography entry." https://danieljtortora.com/blog/3-em-dashes

That is so stupid. Absolutely does not deserve a new character just for that(especially one that is so unusually large). Whoever introduced that is absolutely drunk on power. The only reason that exists is because of a power discrepancy where the people with powers to create new characters are also the ones who do enough writing that they feel such a specific and niche pain.

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm.

If not, I doubt some typesetter in the 19th century (or earlier) was so drunk with power when setting out the lead type to make the 3-em dash.

EDIT: Additionally, unicode primarily exists to encode the typographic symbols that exist—that is to say, it's a catalog of what already is. Take Ogham[1] for example.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogham_(Unicode_block)

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#102

Post by QuercusMax »

douglee650 wrote: post #72

Author failed to explain the dash universe and their semantic assignments. - em dash: adjoining thought (Hey, so — ) - en dash: expresses a range (1–100) - dash: compounds word-parts (Sarbanes-Oxley) I'd also like to see more concise philosophy around em v. ellipsis, "limerance" is poetic (and ironically antithetical to this "essay" … and what of parens?). In short, em is communication and ellipsis is personal. I off…

which one of those is a hyphen?

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#104

Post by matteason »

mc32 wrote: post #87
douglee650 wrote: post #72

Author failed to explain the dash universe and their semantic assignments. - em dash: adjoining thought (Hey, so — ) - en dash: expresses a range (1–100) - dash: compounds word-parts (Sarbanes-Oxley) I'd also like to see more concise philosophy around em v. ellipsis, "limerance" is poetic (and ironically antithetical to this "essay" … and what of parens?). In short, em is communication and ellipsis is personal. I off…

Which one is the minus symbol?

U+2212: −

https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2212

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#105

Post by anonthrownaway »

WillAdams wrote: post #96
anonthrownaway wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong analogy. Why should I bother to differentiate between the length of a dash when the vast majority of readers don't have a clue what it means (and don't need it to determine meaning).

Because it looks better and is a guide to communication. For the poster child of a naïvely set/composed text which suffers thereby see: https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/vir... That a book about a perfectly made tool cabinet suffers from so many typos (the maker's name, Henry, is mis-spelled on the inside cover) and such pedestrian composition embodies much of what went wrong when the typesetti…

>Because it looks better and is a guide to communication.

Personally, I think em-dashes (when in a font that shows the damn difference) look exaggerated and silly. They certainly don't provide any important guidance to its meaning that I can't derive from context.

That was a cool toolbox BTW :)

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#106

Post by jayknight »

snowwrestler wrote: post #100

Em dashes—if properly used—are really useful. They help convey that I am so smart—and I think so fast—that I have to constantly interrupt myself. But—and I think this is important—it’s really easy to overuse them.

Ah, so my constant interrupting myself is a sign of intelligence? That's great news.

But seriously, trying to express the spider web of thoughts in my head as a linear string of words is really difficult for me and that doesn't make me feel very smart.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#107

Post by TehCorwiz »

adverbly wrote: post #93
eddyg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is (and, increasingly, was) used to signify that a bibliography entry has the exact same author(s), editor(s), translator(s), or corporate author(s) as the previous bibliography entry." https://danieljtortora.com/blog/3-em-dashes

That is so stupid. Absolutely does not deserve a new character just for that(especially one that is so unusually large). Whoever introduced that is absolutely drunk on power. The only reason that exists is because of a power discrepancy where the people with powers to create new characters are also the ones who do enough writing that they feel such a specific and niche pain.

Did you notice the examples were really old? Like late 1700s old?

Now, imagine you have a wooden box of lead or pewter letter forms. They're small, heavy and backwards. You spend your days lining up those forms in rows and then pressing them to ink and paper to print books and documents.

So you're lining them up, slowly running out of 'e's and 'f's and 'r's. You decide to save yourself some time and more importantly some of your precious few letters that you need to make last the whole page. So you omit some of those words, names in this case, and establish a convention with other printers and authors about how and when to replace words with shorthand. This lets you and your fellow printers save time by not having to work to arrange those admittedly duplicate letters and stretch those letters.

Fun fact, that's why old 's' are sometimes written with an 'f' missing the bar. Because they were re-using forms where otherwise a letter was so common they'd run out!

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#108

Post by EGreg »

douglee650 wrote: post #72

Author failed to explain the dash universe and their semantic assignments. - em dash: adjoining thought (Hey, so — ) - en dash: expresses a range (1–100) - dash: compounds word-parts (Sarbanes-Oxley) I'd also like to see more concise philosophy around em v. ellipsis, "limerance" is poetic (and ironically antithetical to this "essay" … and what of parens?). In short, em is communication and ellipsis is personal. I off…

In many countries around the world, em dashes also express dialogue!

I grew up reading novels and plays

Inspector Lestrade and Holmes were speaking:

— What’s up?

— Not much

— Cool.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#109

Post by eddyg »

adverbly wrote: post #93
eddyg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is (and, increasingly, was) used to signify that a bibliography entry has the exact same author(s), editor(s), translator(s), or corporate author(s) as the previous bibliography entry." https://danieljtortora.com/blog/3-em-dashes

That is so stupid. Absolutely does not deserve a new character just for that(especially one that is so unusually large). Whoever introduced that is absolutely drunk on power. The only reason that exists is because of a power discrepancy where the people with powers to create new characters are also the ones who do enough writing that they feel such a specific and niche pain.

How do you feel about the Tironian Sign Capital Et? https://www.unicodecharacter.org/U+2E52

I mean the triple-em-dash has been around since Unicode 6.1; The Tironian Sign Capital Et wasn't added until Unicode 13.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#110

Post by lesostep »

ryukoposting wrote: post #54
koolala wrote: post #12

Test: 'There is no greater joy in life than typing a sentence, realising it needs a clarification, a caveat, an addendum, but in the same sentence, not a new one, and, guess what, the comma is right there for you. You want to package things neatly together, and the comma lets you do exactly this. Commas make writing feel like you are assembling lego bricks.' I like using commas for spacing though em dashes do the sam…

Yeah. They also use em dashes to repeat a word with emphasis, something that is done much better with parentheses and italics. > And also occasionally — occasionally — one just needs a random dramatic pause. > And also occasionally (occasionally) one just needs a random dramatic pause. I know which one I'd rather read. Though, frankly, I'd prefer neither and I'm trying to remove this kind of thing from my own writing…

I can't be the only one that reads those two examples very differently.

In a first example, the second "occasionally" is stressed, when in second example it feels almost whispered.

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