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Em dashes are amazing

psychotechnology.substack.com

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Re: Em dashes are amazing

#171

Post by msisk6 »

douglee650 wrote: post #160
tshaddox wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised to see that you put spaces around the em dash in your example.

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.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#172

Post by pimlottc »

skinfaxi wrote: post #139
treetalker wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apparently the first use of the hyphen disagrees: > The first known documentation of the hyphen is in the grammatical works of Dionysius Thrax. At the time, hyphenation was joining two pieces of text that might otherwise be read as two separate words by a low tie mark. This was necessary due to the ambiguity inherent in the lack of word spacing. In Greek these marks were known as enotikon, officially romanized as a h…

That’s the first use, and in another language to boot. Usage changes over time.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#173

Post by sheept »

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…

> - dash: compounds word-parts (Sarbanes-Oxley)

That's a hyphen, and (to be pedantic) style guides usually do not consider it a dash.

There's also the 2-em dash in some style guides for redacting words, and since care needs to be taken to avoid a line wrap between the em dashes, Unicode has a character for it: ⸺

Finally,

> - em dash: adjoining thought (Hey, so — )

This use is sometimes discouraged by style guides, and in many cases, it can be replaced with a colon, comma, or semicolon.

In general, even before AI, the em dash is often considered overused.[0] My guess is that the em dash is perceived as sounding educated, so novice writers who learn about it end up using it recklessly, and LLMs could've picked up this habit from them.

[0]: https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/05/em-dashes-why-write...

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#174

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

> on Mac, for example, it’s simply Option + Shift + Hyphen

And on Windows it's Alt + 0151 on the numeric keypad, which means you a) must have a numeric keypad and remember the number, or b) must use the emoji search. And on Linux it's weird too.

Em dashes are therefore Mac user garbage. The correct replacement is --

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#175

Post by jerf »

usui wrote: post #77

You might think em dashes are amazing—but there is something three times better⸻the "three-em dash" (U+2E3B). Why this thing exists, I do not know. Unicode people seem to like making bad decisions, like Han unification and emoji sprawl.

You also shouldn't forget the Eminem dash: –—–. Recommended for use in censoring words in rap songs.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#176

Post by tracker1 »

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…

I just know that MS-Word will replace a hyphen with an em dash in practical use, which is a big part of why I didn't really pick it out as an AI thing in general. Though AI, in particular Chat GPT, does tend to use a lot of them.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#177

Post by pimlottc »

locknitpicker wrote: post #88
usui wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... would it really be that big of a crime against humanity to insert two or three em dashes if the situation seriously needs it? I already have enough trouble distinguishing an en dash from an em dash.

> I mean... would it really be that big of a crime against humanity to insert two or three em dashes if the situation seriously needs it? Imagine a discussion on how many em dashes should be used that mimics the discussions on story points.

It’s can’t be any more difficult than getting people to agree on how many spaces to use for indentation…

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#178

Post by tracker1 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #174

> on Mac, for example, it’s simply Option + Shift + Hyphen And on Windows it's Alt + 0151 on the numeric keypad, which means you a) must have a numeric keypad and remember the number, or b) must use the emoji search. And on Linux it's weird too. Em dashes are therefore Mac user garbage. The correct replacement is --

MS-Word will replace " - " inside a paragraph with an em dash, fwiw. I don't know for sure about other word processors, I don't use them much tbf.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#179

Post by DicIfTEx »

I'm unreasonably fond of the numero symbol (№), although I've never quite settled on whether it should be followed immediately by the number or whether there should be a (non-breaking, potentially thin) space between them. Although it does tend to look awful in monospace fonts.

Re: Em dashes are amazing

#180

Post by [deleted] »

usui wrote: post #77

You might think em dashes are amazing—but there is something three times better⸻the "three-em dash" (U+2E3B). Why this thing exists, I do not know. Unicode people seem to like making bad decisions, like Han unification and emoji sprawl.

[deleted]
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