291–300 of 330 posts
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Fun fact! Where a compound term is formed by joining two nouns of equal importance — such as Sarbanes–Oxley or attorney–client privilege — an en-dash, not a hyphen, should be used.
That’s how we distinguish the Cox–Zucker Machine [1] from other Cox-Zucker Machines (scnr) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox–Zucker_machine
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Know the rules, fight the rules, I guess. More readable, but I’ve since regressed as tooling comes into play. Maybe it’s a good way to still use ems and differentiate from AI.
Looks and readability matter in writing. I always uses spaces on either side of the em-dash; looks too crowded otherwise to my eye. I've been doing doing it that way for so long I still often use the "--" construct from way back in ascii email days. At least I've gotten past the two-spaces after a period I learned from the typewriter. Most of the time, anyway.
- A single hyphen designates ... a hyphen.
- A doubled hyphen designates an en dash.
- A tripled hyphen designates an em dash.
https://ladedu.com/how-to-use-en-dash-and-em-dash-in-latex/>
(I'm not aware of longer dashes native to LaTeX, though I believe doubled en or em dashes are occasionally used.)
Many Markdown flavours incorporate this, such that en / em dash usage in Markdown-authored docs should not be entirely unexpected. I believe many LLMs output Markdown which is subsequently rendered, based on watching intermediate outputs and saved sessions. I tend to adopt LaTeX / Markdown semantics elsewhere.
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Sounds like you'll appreciate my favorite related bit of typographic dash pedantry, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-... If you want to be official about things, use the en dash to replace a hyphen in compound adjectives when at least one of the elements is a two-word compound. the pre–Websterburg Bakery era The thinking is that using a hyphen here, as in “the pre-Websterburg Bakery er…
> I don't know how to code an endash here. Just type it like normal – alt-hyphen on Macs, and I'm sure equivalent on other systems.
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If you’re on a Mac or iOS, it’s extremely easy to use the global text substitution to replace three periods (..., v...) with ellipsis (…, ⋮), and other symbols ((c), (r ), ^o, etc.) with their Unicode equivalent (©, ®, °, etc.).
Ellipsis, at least, has been trivial to type (alt-semicolon) since long before global text substitution existed…
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…
Before printing press became common, there was a time there were three punctuation marks[0]:
- dot
- dot but lower
- dot but higher
Very fortunately, that system got abandoned and we have comma and period now.
But then somehow, unfortunately, people invented a system where we have dash, dash but longer and dash but even shorter.
[0]: https://thejohnfox.com/2016/03/history-of-punctuation-signs/
"Monotonic Labs: We Do What We Have To—Because We Like It"
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…
I would always prefer to do: " There is no greater joy in life than typing a sentence, realising it needs a clarification, a caveat, an addendum (in the same sentence, not a new one) and, guess what, parentheses are right there for you. "
LLMs use em- dashes because they appear in the training set. In other words, humans use them a lot. Such a weird issue to be adopted as an indicator of robot text.
Like all slop. There's a reason it's called slop and it's not because of restraint
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…
Perhaps it's just me, but in my opinion, having not just two but three similar symbols is just bad design. Before printing press became common, there was a time there were three punctuation marks[0]: - dot - dot but lower - dot but higher Very fortunately, that system got abandoned and we have comma and period now. But then somehow, unfortunately, people invented a system where we have dash, dash but longer and dash…
As much as I consider these to be redundant and a waste of effort, I would genuinely be interested in a case being made for why they are good and useful to keep around.
Spent the whole essay typing them incorrectly. There should not be spaces surrounding an emdash.
Personally, I find it ugly and less readable without spaces.