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Regarding the Em Dash

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Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#41

Post by alanfalcon »

colanderman wrote: post #34
dragonwriter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash. Horrible; if you are going to set a dash open and use it for the purpose of an em-dash, use an en-dash. Setting an em-dash open is ugly as hell. > I prefer to ASCII-encode my em dashes with three hyphens. Two-hyphens is conventional for an en-dash. Since a set-open en-dash serves the same purposes as an em-dash, a lot of people just use that instead of t…

I agree with you but I think you have mistyped "em" as "en" is several places. EDIT: Fixed now.

See what happens when people use en dashes when they mean to use em dashes? Total chaos!

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#42

Post by wtallis »

gshubert17 wrote: post #19
jasoncrawford wrote: post #3

Tip: On a Mac, you can type an em-dash with shift-option-hyphen. (An en-dash is just option-hyphen.)

Thanks, I have been looking for that. But it's command-hyphen for en-dash, and shift-command-hyphen for em-dash on my Mac.

Why do you have command and option reversed? Are you using a non-Apple keyboard?

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#43

Post by cryptonector »

Yes! I use em dashes quite often. I tire of commas and parenthesis. I do prefer two short dashes together, because I enjoy ASCII. I also use short dashes as parenthesis sometimes, -like this-, but this doesn't always work well as some UIs use that for strikethrough.

EDIT: Do please put whitespace around em dashes.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#44

Post by mort96 »

colanderman wrote: post #34
dragonwriter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash. Horrible; if you are going to set a dash open and use it for the purpose of an em-dash, use an en-dash. Setting an em-dash open is ugly as hell. > I prefer to ASCII-encode my em dashes with three hyphens. Two-hyphens is conventional for an en-dash. Since a set-open en-dash serves the same purposes as an em-dash, a lot of people just use that instead of t…

I agree with you but I think you have mistyped "em" as "en" is several places. EDIT: Fixed now.

There's such a thing as an en-dash too: http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/en-dash.html

I don't know enough about punctuation to know whether he actually meant "em" when he wrote "en" in several places, but I'm going to assume he actually meant to refer to em-dashes some places, and en-dashes others.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#45

Post by pvg »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #10

Maybe I'm weirdly old fashioned, but I try to stick to ascii whenever possible - which means whatever character is stuck in the middle of this sentence. Ditto for the ellipsis, since it's not like three trailing periods at the end of a sentence can be mistaken for anything else...

I think you're just like most everyone else - and it's not really about ASCII. There's only one easily accessible dash on the keyboard. The distinction between hyphens, en- and em- (is there a better indication of the level of minutia involved than the fact the latter two not only look nearly the same but are also pronounced almost identically?) dashes is important for typesetters and typography enthusiasts. Everyone (statistically) else just smacks the thing near the top right of their keyboard and it's fine.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#46

Post by cryptonector »

combatentropy wrote: post #20

The em dash is the most beautiful punctuation mark, all the more because it is rare --- and it is best kept that way. Certainly a sentence with more than two is imparsible. In fact, more than a few in a whole article is probably getting annoying. It's like the exclamation point in that way. Once you discover the em dash, it is hard to restrain yourself. But I'm trying to come back to the comma. It does its work witho…

Two hyphens is plenty. Three is calling attention to it. One is pitiful.

While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). In ASCII that's two spaces. We're not animals. Let's behave accordingly.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#47

Post by cryptonector »

dragonwriter wrote: post #28
combatentropy wrote: post #20

The em dash is the most beautiful punctuation mark, all the more because it is rare --- and it is best kept that way. Certainly a sentence with more than two is imparsible. In fact, more than a few in a whole article is probably getting annoying. It's like the exclamation point in that way. Once you discover the em dash, it is hard to restrain yourself. But I'm trying to come back to the comma. It does its work witho…

> I land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash. Horrible; if you are going to set a dash open and use it for the purpose of an em-dash, use an en-dash. Setting an em-dash open is ugly as hell. > I prefer to ASCII-encode my em dashes with three hyphens. Two-hyphens is conventional for an en-dash. Since a set-open en-dash serves the same purposes as an em-dash, a lot of people just use that instead of t…

I find space-less em dashes hard on the eyes. The extra whitespace around the em dash helps denote the "aside-ness" of the remark.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#48

Post by cryptonector »

mort96 wrote: post #44
colanderman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you but I think you have mistyped "em" as "en" is several places. EDIT: Fixed now.

There's such a thing as an en-dash too: http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/en-dash.html I don't know enough about punctuation to know whether he actually meant "em" when he wrote "en" in several places, but I'm going to assume he actually meant to refer to em-dashes some places, and en-dashes others.

"you misspelled ..." is often a way to be funny. I suspect colanderman was making a point about em dashes being mo' better than en dashes.

Re: Regarding the Em Dash

#49

Post by kps »

sjwright wrote: post #24
gk1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few reasons why I switched from PC to Mac, but there's only one reason I'll never switch back—it's this em-dash shortcut.

Also for me: Opt-P for Pi π Opt-8 for Bullet • Opt-Shift-8 for Degree ° (And there are simple, memorable shortcuts for Pounds, Cents, Yen, Euro, Trademark, Copyright, Ohms, Infinity, and lots of math notation...)

On *nix with xkb, you can get these by selecting the 'us(mac)' layout. You'll need an AltGraph key (i.e. Option), which is usually on AltRight in Windows fashion.
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