I think en dashes are good enough to use as comma replacements. I especially like The Economist's style of using a thin space, then an en dash, then another thi

I think en dashes are good enough to use as comma replacements. I especially like The Economist's style of using a thin space, then an en dash, then another thin space to punctuate the break properly. But in plain text, I'm perfectly fine with using two hyphens together.