15 ms·

Regarding the Em Dash

281 points by samclemens 9y ago

cryptonector 9y ago
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.
- krsdcbl 9y ago
  To your edit: i wouldn't recommend, the EM dash should generally be used without surrounding spaces. It is dimensioned to set a proper pause in the text and will rip holes in your text body if surrounded by so much additional white space. You also wouldn't put a space before a period . (Use an EN dash with spaces, if you must)
  - cryptonector 9y ago
    http://apvschicago.com/2011/05/em-dashes-and-ellipses-closed-or-spaced.html http://apvschicago.com/2011/05/em-dashes-and-ellipses-closed...
pash 9y ago
The em-dash is like the AK-47: it feels good in one’s own hand, but one is distressed to find it everywhere one looks. If you find yourself wielding either often, you should stop and ask yourself: “Am I the bad guy?” Just minutes ago I read two articles demonstrating the horror of a world awash in em-dashes, both in The New York Times [0, 1]. One may empathize with the writers, if one is so inclined: they have employed em-dashes for emphasis, to insert asides, and to lend needed structure to their sentences. But I think one should not be so sympathetic, because they’ve used 19 of the damn things (!), and every usage would arguably be improved by substituting another form of punctuation or by restructuring the sentence in a way that eliminates the need for complex punctuation entirely. The ugliest em-dash is in the second sentence of the first article: > A new class of security vulnerability — a variety of flaws that affect almost all major microprocessor chips, and that could enable hackers to steal information from personal computers as well as cloud computing services — was announced on Wednesday. This is an abomination. The writer has needlessly separated the sentence’s subject and predicate by two em-dashes and 28 words in two phrases, burdening the reader with the task of untangling her mess. Did neither she nor her editor care enough about the reader to re-write the sentence trivially in a natural way? Try this: A new class of security vulnerability was announced on Wednesday, a variety of flaws that affect almost all major microprocessor chips. The flaws could enable hackers to steal information from personal computers as well as cloud computing services. This use of a double em-dash to insert additional information mid-sentence is almost always the wrong thing to do. Here’s another example from the second article: > Over the next few years, hundreds of millions of dollars in American deposits flowed from Swiss banking stalwarts — institutions like Credit Suisse and Julius Baer — to Bank Frey. I propose instead: Over the next few years, hundreds of millions of dollars in American deposits flowed to Bank Frey from Swiss banking stalwarts like Credit Suisse and Julius Baer. If you find yourself using em-dashes like this, pause and ask yourself why you can’t render the sentence more naturally. Most times you can, whether by restructuring the sentence, by using standard appositive phrases set off by commas, or by true parentheticals (preferably at the end of the sentence, not dividing the subject and predicate). If you can’t make that work, consider separating the information you wish to convey into two or more sentences. Here are some more examples of what not to do. From the second article: > And since the problem is built into the hardware — billions of chips that cannot easily be replaced — fixing this class of problems may also be prohibitively expensive. Just replace “hardware” with the more detailed phrase and a comma: “... since the problem is built into billions of chips that cannot easily be replaced, fixing ...” From the second article: > She would return to the United States secretly carrying just under $10,000 in cash — the cutoff for having to make a customs declaration. Just use a fucking comma! Now, if you’ll give me a moment to collect myself in the face of all of this grammatical turpitude, I will say that there are two usages of the em-dash in these articles that I do think sensible. Both set off information in ways that other forms of punctuation can’t (except for the venerable parentheses), and they do so in ways that don’t interrupt the logical flow of the sentence: > A common trick involves having the microprocessor predict what the program is about to do and start doing it before it has been asked to do it — say, fetching data from memory. > Prosecutors said all the secrecy — the nameless debit cards, the scissored bank paperwork, the shadowy phone calls — showed Mr. Buck knew what he was doing was wrong. TLDR: if you use em-dashes often, you might be a lazy writer with a bad editor. ——— 0. “The looming digital meltdown,” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opinion/looming-digital-meltdown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opinion/looming-digital-m... 1. “A Swiss banker helped Americans dodge taxes. Was it a crime?”, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/stefan-buck-tax-evasion.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/stefan-buck-tax-...
- combatentropy 9y ago
  Midsentence injection deserves its own thread. Is it a trend, or am I just noticing it more? It's hard on the brain, because you have to hold the first part of the sentence in memory while you take in the interruption. Your example is great, the one about the security vulnerability. Your revisions are much better in all cases. It's actually my first impulse to inject these midsentence clauses. Is it because of a short attention span, or is it a fear of someone raising an objection if I don't qualify every statement?
  - pash 9y ago
    I do it too, when I’m being lazy. It simply requires more effort to order one’s thoughts well. The best reference on style I know in this regard is Joseph Williams’s book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace [0]. The book explains how to analyze your own writing to lessen the mental burden on the reader, mainly by re-writing your sentences so that there is a natural logical flow from subject to predicate to object, with detail added in phrases that don’t get in the way. 0. https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM1990StyleTowardClarityandGrace.pdf https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM199... [PDF]
  - anjbe 9y ago
    There was a fascinating article recently about sentence complexity and embedded clauses in language: https://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-english-sentence https://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of...
  - therealdrag0 9y ago
    Your comment reminds me of the book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" by Steven Pinker. I highly recommend it. He talks about the effect of sentence flow on the brain and how sentences can be simplified.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Thank you, thank you, thank you.
calebm 9y ago
This is awesome :) I've been using the em-dash a lot recently, but didn't even know it had a name. It often seems more natural than using semicolons— semicolons often feel more formal and cold.
- ravenstine 9y ago
  I still prefer semicolons when connecting two related thoughts, whereas it seems that em-dashes are most often used as a pause or a pseudo-comma. The brilliance of the semicolon is that you can connect two or more closely related sentences without a full stop. Em-dashes can't be used to connect multiple complete sentences. Semicolons are really more powerful than em-dashes, less pretty they may be.
pseingatl 9y ago
For dialog, as used by James Joyce, or in typesetting other languages such as Spanish, French and Polish, the em dash (U+2014) is not used, but the quotation dash is (U+2015). The quotation dash is a bit longer. See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash.
Vinnl 9y ago
I guess the Em Dash is like the Kurwa of punctuation: > The most common curse word in Polish is kurwa, which can mean a variety of things - damn, bitch, fuck, {insert any word}, and can even serve as a comma. https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Polish_phrasebook#Phrase_list https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Polish_phrasebook#Phrase_list
ianamartin 9y ago
The only thing that disappointed me about this article was that there wasn't enough David Foster Wallace. But perhaps the author is saving that for an article about footnotes.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
I know this because I've read Knuth's The TeXbook. I learnt so much about typography from that book. And yes I did find several places to use an em dash in my PhD thesis.
OliverJones 9y ago
I learned old-school printing in high school. We had a press with a flatbed and screw. More to the point, we had lower and upper cases filled with steel type, including lots of different dashes and spaces. Our teacher was a traditionalist. He taught us such things as how to justify a line of type. Narrowing a line involved switching "thicks" (nominal space slugs) for "middles" in an artful way. Widening it involved switching thicks for two "thins", and so forth. We had plenty of dash characters--we had hyphens of course, and figure dashes, and en dashes, and em dashes. Figure dashes are one en in width, with the vertical position of the visible element is designed to match the numerals in the font. This let us set a sentence like so with subtle perfection. Type designer John Baskerville (1706-1775) owned a printing-works and type foundry in Manchester. Does anybody notice this sort of thing? Probably nobody except book designers. Does anybody care? Well, my mom said she cared when I pointed it out to her. From that teacher I learned to respect the choices of the type designer and how to use those choices. His tradition--now mine--dictates that all these dashes be typeset closed, without leading or trailing spaces. In the OpenType era, a type designer may choose to leave a speck of white space around a dash, but it's up to the designer, not the typesetter. Text rendering in software like web browsers and word processors is gradually catching up to the tradition. Adobe's InDesign product does a great job of all this. Recent versions of MS Word are great improvements. It helps to know the HTML entities for these items if you'll play around with them in your web pages. — em-dash – en-dash ‒ figure dash (using en-dash is mostly acceptabe). ‑ non-breaking hyphen &emsp; one em of space &ensp; one en of space   the much-misused nonbreaking space (use an en space for  &nbsp ktksbai)   thin space (0.2-0.25em)
- leephillips 9y ago
  People who use [La]TeX tend to become a bit obsessive over typographic details, as well. What do you think of that program? (Very interesting comment, by the way.)
  - kashyapc 9y ago
    FWIW, as a relatively novice LaTex (in combination with the Beamer program, largely for technical presentations) user, I can imagine why such people nit-pick over typography. The Computer Modern and its derivative Latin Modern fonts are beautiful---not to mention their inimitable flexibility. I'll blame two of my colleagues for indirectly 'inspiring' me to spend more time than justified, tinkering with LaTex and TikZ (it lets you produce "vector graphics from a geometric/algebraic description"). I'm not happy with the amount of time I spend with LaTex+TikZ, but I find the results to be satisfying and very convincing. Have to diligently chip away at it to get more productive with them.
the_af 9y ago
Philip K Dick, one of my favorite authors, used the em dash a great deal. In fact, I think I first noticed it in his stories. Without having been taught how to use o read it, I immediately understood PKD's intent -- and how the dash wasn't exactly necessary for anything but flavor. A mimic of other punctuation marks is an apt description! I've been abusing the em dash since.
WovenTales 9y ago
I love dashes. I do tend to avoid ems for parenthetical remarks – for those, I'll use spaced ens – but I do definitely use the longer for interjections and (roughly) semicolons, as the article describes. Where I break from convention is that, if they're marking an interjection or other interruption, I will put a space in on a single side of the dash— like so —to better demarcate the logical flow. Then again, I also put a thin space before exclamation points, etc. if I can (though unlike French, nothing if I just have full spaces), so I have other reasons to dismiss the complaints about style.
- quietbritishjim 9y ago
  I realise this is nothing more than my opinion, but I have to tell you that asymmetric spacing around a dash looks awful.
  - WovenTales 9y ago
    Thanks for that, actually! You're the first to comment on the aesthetics rather than the "incorrect" usage. My thinking is that the dashes are part of the pragmatics of the primary, wrapping phrase, and don't actually interact with the inner one—they are therefore bound to the first and separate from the second. Whether or not it's a good look, the fact that doing so much better signposts the parenthetical makes it worth it, right? And that spacing rule is actually almost the same as with ellipses, though I'm definitely with you on that taking a while to look good to me as well. Do you think it's just being unused to that layout, or is there some deeper issue to how it looks?
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      There's a lot in what you say. Not crazy at all. They only looked awful for about 10 seconds hehe. But sure, using them to help show the meaning is a good idea. I've recently learnt to write a = b*c + d, spacing assisting clarity. Carry on, I support you in your chosen mission.
kevmo314 9y ago
> Depending on the context, the em dash can take the place of commas, parentheses, or colons—in each case to slightly different effect.” The “slightly different” part is, to me, the em dash’s appeal summarized. For me, it's of the opposite. It's like using `auto` too universally in C++: sometimes it's helpful to know the type you actually intend. Although I cede that the overuse in the article is more likely because it's discussing it and making a whimsical point. :)
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Commas also can take the place of parentheses and, sometimes, colons. Punctuation is like sentence structure in general, adaptable.
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    Sure, they can (but should they?)
jasoncrawford 9y ago
Tip: On a Mac, you can type an em-dash with shift-option-hyphen. (An en-dash is just option-hyphen.)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- twhb 9y ago
  Follow-up tip: also on a Mac, go to System Preferences → Keyboard and check “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar”. Then, hit the icon just added to the menu bar and select “Show Keyboard Viewer”. With it open, hold down Option, Option+Shift, etc, to live-preview what will be typed. For symbols not there, hit Control+Command+Space to open the emoji/unicode typer. Hit the icon in the upper right to switch to a view where you can add favorites, like those arrows above. Some favorite shortcuts of mine besides the dashes: - Option+; → … (proper ellipsis) - Option+[ and Option+Shift+[ → “ and ” (admittedly, typing in an editor with smart quotes is better) - Option+] and Option+Shift+] → ‘ and ’ - Option+= → ≠ - Option+Shift+= → ± - Option+x → ≈ - Option+, → ≤ - Option+. → ≥ - Option+Shift+8 → ° (degree symbol, don’t confuse with similar characters) - Option+p → π I read something related to Perl 6 work that resonated: Unicode opens up a lot more possibilities than we’ve taken advantage of, we just don’t yet have the hardware to make it convenient. Keys labels as screens is a perennial idea; maybe once somebody does a great job of it, we’ll see those Option shortcuts frequently used.
  - colanderman 9y ago
    Personally I’m a big fan of the compose key for such matters. (Both OS X and Linux.) The mnemonics I find easier to remember. • Compose . . → … • Compose < " and Compose > " → “ and ” • Compose < ' and Compose > ' → ‘ and ’ • Compose / = → ≠ • Compose + - → ± • (couldn't figure out ≈) • Compose < = → ≤ • Compose > = → ≥ • Compose o o → ° • (no compose for π)
    - anjbe 9y ago
      > (no compose for π) You can create your own compose sequences in ~/.XCompose. I mapped pi to Compose * p, taking the idea from Plan 9: https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man7/keyboard.html https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man7/keyboard.html
weeksie 9y ago
I used to be an em dash over-user but have calmed down quite a bit in that department over the last several years. My current idée fixe is the archaic ellipsis as (over) used by Céline . . . I just can't bring myself to go with the single character scrunchy version.
- s4vi0r 9y ago
  I cringe physically every time I see an ellipsis, they're like the calling card of the tech illiterate 30-40+ year old. I don't know why they like them so much... But they end... Every sentence or thought... Like this...
  - rz2k 9y ago
    I wonder how the em-dash has avoided this. It seems to just fade into the writing and make the phrases sound like the writer wanted them to sound. Both ellipses and semicolons carry far too much baggage with them, and make a lot of people have strong feelings about the author, occasionally positive.
    - restuijs 9y ago
      I've never understood strong reactions to unusual punctuation. They serve purposes that are not well-served by anything else. Inappropriate use I can understand, but that's just like misspelling. You don't advocate for elimination of the word "loose", for example, just because it's often misused. Ellipses, for example, are useful for conveying implied but unstated thoughts. There's nothing else that functions the same way. Semicolons serve similar unique functions.
- girzel 9y ago
  Properly formatted (ie, in LaTeX), the real ellipsis character is the only way to go. With fixed-width fonts it's ugly, but with fixed-width fonts most of the typography is in your imagination, anyway. The hideous [dot][space][dot][space][dot][space] approach needs to die.
  - 9y ago
pavel_lishin 9y ago
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...
- pvg 9y ago
  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.
- mikeklaas 9y ago
  You might consider using two hyphens if you can't bear to use the unicode character.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  I think that makes you decidedly new-fashioned. Typesetting has been done much longer than ASCII has existed after all.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  Why? Unicode is (nearly) everywhere these days and offers so much more expressiveness, why stick to ASCII?
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > offers so much more expressiveness I don't know the difference between em-dash and en-dash. But I'd also wager that you don't stumble and come to a grinding halt when you see a - in the middle of a sentence, like a robot trying to parse words as arithmetic. I've never, ever once had anyone complain to me that my meaning was unclear when using a - or ' in an email, but I've seen encodings get jumbled. There's no gain for me to not stick to ascii in 99% of cases.
bmpafa 9y ago
As someone who takes flak from literati friends for his em dashin', this is a vindicating find—(!)thanks, OP. I learned to use em dashes in the military on our performance reports (sort of like an annual resume with a grade attached). For a few (dubious) reasons, every bullet had to be precisely 1 line long, +/- 0-3 spaces at EOL (we had almost as many rules regarding these bullets as we did the other kind, it seemed). Since we had a lot of (usually somewhat independent) points to jam into 1 line, we often had lots of separate clauses with a period, semi-colon[1], or em dash. The em dash always seemed to fill precisely the correct amount of space. 1: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
seandougall 9y ago
Am I the only curmudgeon who can’t get past the extra space after periods in a post about punctuation?
- bmpafa 9y ago
  Nope. Raging against double-spaces post-period was all the rage a few years back[1], so I'm sure it raises quite a few curmudgeonly hackles. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...
  - SquareWheel 9y ago
    I see this article quoted all the time, and every time I read it I get frustrated again. >But I actually think aesthetics are the best argument in favor of one space over two. One space is simpler, cleaner, and more visually pleasing. Okay, great? So your best argument is that you subjectively prefer it over two spaces. >The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Ah, but our valiant author sure was ready to put them in their place! I find this whole article oozes condescension and faulty logic, and I can't help but get my dander up whenever I see it referenced.
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    My sixth grade teacher cured me of this right quick. “Pick up a book,” she said, “—go on.” I did so. I looked up at her but she just looked back down at me. I opened the book. I looked at the spacing. I closed the book, looked back up at my teacher and said, simply, “I see.”
    - alanfalcon 9y ago
      That selfsame teacher admonished me for turning in a creative writing assignment with single sentence paragraphs in dialog: “Paragraphs consist of a topic sentence, supporting arguments, and a concluding statement,” she insisted. I looked up at her, “But... books—!” She wouldn’t have it. “When you write a 40,000 word novel you can use one sentence paragraphs.” So, 19 years later, I did.
combatentropy 9y ago
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 without fanfare, almost invisibly. The mature writer realizes his job is to tell the reader something without getting in the way. I land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash. Unconventionally, I prefer to ASCII-encode my em dashes with three hyphens. The traditional two aren't long enough. But two is better than one. I always have to reread sentences by someone who thinks the hyphen and the dash are the same thing.
- cryptonector 9y ago
  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.
  - seandougall 9y ago
    > While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). This convention started with typewriters, and typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts. This is also why HTML takes the liberty of reducing whitespace down to a single space character unless you go out of your way to use an  .
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      But what of sentences that end with an abbreviation that ends in a period, like "U.S."? If it's just one space after a period, it's impossible to know that the sentence has ended? I realize in books or published articles this can be typeset in a smart way to make it distinguishable, but what about in ordinary writing?
wiradikusuma 9y ago
I use mdash for "side thoughts", such as: It turned green—like I care. He kicked that person's butt—quite hard actually—without thinking of the repercussions.
- radmarshallb 9y ago
  I tend to use parentheses in the way that it appears most people are using the emdash (like in your second example).

281 points by samclemens 9y ago

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.

krsdcbl 9y ago
To your edit: i wouldn't recommend, the EM dash should generally be used without surrounding spaces. It is dimensioned to set a proper pause in the text and will rip holes in your text body if surrounded by so much additional white space. You also wouldn't put a space before a period . (Use an EN dash with spaces, if you must)
- cryptonector 9y ago
  http://apvschicago.com/2011/05/em-dashes-and-ellipses-closed-or-spaced.html http://apvschicago.com/2011/05/em-dashes-and-ellipses-closed...

pash 9y ago

The em-dash is like the AK-47: it feels good in one’s own hand, but one is distressed to find it everywhere one looks. If you find yourself wielding either often, you should stop and ask yourself: “Am I the bad guy?” Just minutes ago I read two articles demonstrating the horror of a world awash in em-dashes, both in The New York Times [0, 1]. One may empathize with the writers, if one is so inclined: they have employed em-dashes for emphasis, to insert asides, and to lend needed structure to their sentences. But I think one should not be so sympathetic, because they’ve used 19 of the damn things (!), and every usage would arguably be improved by substituting another form of punctuation or by restructuring the sentence in a way that eliminates the need for complex punctuation entirely. The ugliest em-dash is in the second sentence of the first article: > A new class of security vulnerability — a variety of flaws that affect almost all major microprocessor chips, and that could enable hackers to steal information from personal computers as well as cloud computing services — was announced on Wednesday. This is an abomination. The writer has needlessly separated the sentence’s subject and predicate by two em-dashes and 28 words in two phrases, burdening the reader with the task of untangling her mess. Did neither she nor her editor care enough about the reader to re-write the sentence trivially in a natural way? Try this: A new class of security vulnerability was announced on Wednesday, a variety of flaws that affect almost all major microprocessor chips. The flaws could enable hackers to steal information from personal computers as well as cloud computing services. This use of a double em-dash to insert additional information mid-sentence is almost always the wrong thing to do. Here’s another example from the second article: > Over the next few years, hundreds of millions of dollars in American deposits flowed from Swiss banking stalwarts — institutions like Credit Suisse and Julius Baer — to Bank Frey. I propose instead: Over the next few years, hundreds of millions of dollars in American deposits flowed to Bank Frey from Swiss banking stalwarts like Credit Suisse and Julius Baer. If you find yourself using em-dashes like this, pause and ask yourself why you can’t render the sentence more naturally. Most times you can, whether by restructuring the sentence, by using standard appositive phrases set off by commas, or by true parentheticals (preferably at the end of the sentence, not dividing the subject and predicate). If you can’t make that work, consider separating the information you wish to convey into two or more sentences. Here are some more examples of what not to do. From the second article: > And since the problem is built into the hardware — billions of chips that cannot easily be replaced — fixing this class of problems may also be prohibitively expensive. Just replace “hardware” with the more detailed phrase and a comma: “... since the problem is built into billions of chips that cannot easily be replaced, fixing ...” From the second article: > She would return to the United States secretly carrying just under $10,000 in cash — the cutoff for having to make a customs declaration. Just use a fucking comma! Now, if you’ll give me a moment to collect myself in the face of all of this grammatical turpitude, I will say that there are two usages of the em-dash in these articles that I do think sensible. Both set off information in ways that other forms of punctuation can’t (except for the venerable parentheses), and they do so in ways that don’t interrupt the logical flow of the sentence: > A common trick involves having the microprocessor predict what the program is about to do and start doing it before it has been asked to do it — say, fetching data from memory. > Prosecutors said all the secrecy — the nameless debit cards, the scissored bank paperwork, the shadowy phone calls — showed Mr. Buck knew what he was doing was wrong. TLDR: if you use em-dashes often, you might be a lazy writer with a bad editor. ——— 0. “The looming digital meltdown,” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opinion/looming-digital-meltdown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opinion/looming-digital-m... 1. “A Swiss banker helped Americans dodge taxes. Was it a crime?”, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/stefan-buck-tax-evasion.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/stefan-buck-tax-...

combatentropy 9y ago
Midsentence injection deserves its own thread. Is it a trend, or am I just noticing it more? It's hard on the brain, because you have to hold the first part of the sentence in memory while you take in the interruption. Your example is great, the one about the security vulnerability. Your revisions are much better in all cases. It's actually my first impulse to inject these midsentence clauses. Is it because of a short attention span, or is it a fear of someone raising an objection if I don't qualify every statement?
- pash 9y ago
  I do it too, when I’m being lazy. It simply requires more effort to order one’s thoughts well. The best reference on style I know in this regard is Joseph Williams’s book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace [0]. The book explains how to analyze your own writing to lessen the mental burden on the reader, mainly by re-writing your sentences so that there is a natural logical flow from subject to predicate to object, with detail added in phrases that don’t get in the way. 0. https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM1990StyleTowardClarityandGrace.pdf https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM199... [PDF]
- anjbe 9y ago
  There was a fascinating article recently about sentence complexity and embedded clauses in language: https://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-english-sentence https://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of...
- therealdrag0 9y ago
  Your comment reminds me of the book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" by Steven Pinker. I highly recommend it. He talks about the effect of sentence flow on the brain and how sentences can be simplified.
draw_down 9y ago
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

calebm 9y ago

This is awesome :) I've been using the em-dash a lot recently, but didn't even know it had a name. It often seems more natural than using semicolons— semicolons often feel more formal and cold.

ravenstine 9y ago
I still prefer semicolons when connecting two related thoughts, whereas it seems that em-dashes are most often used as a pause or a pseudo-comma. The brilliance of the semicolon is that you can connect two or more closely related sentences without a full stop. Em-dashes can't be used to connect multiple complete sentences. Semicolons are really more powerful than em-dashes, less pretty they may be.

pseingatl 9y ago

For dialog, as used by James Joyce, or in typesetting other languages such as Spanish, French and Polish, the em dash (U+2014) is not used, but the quotation dash is (U+2015). The quotation dash is a bit longer. See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash.

Vinnl 9y ago

I guess the Em Dash is like the Kurwa of punctuation: > The most common curse word in Polish is kurwa, which can mean a variety of things - damn, bitch, fuck, {insert any word}, and can even serve as a comma. https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Polish_phrasebook#Phrase_list https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Polish_phrasebook#Phrase_list

ianamartin 9y ago

The only thing that disappointed me about this article was that there wasn't enough David Foster Wallace. But perhaps the author is saving that for an article about footnotes.

cup-of-tea 9y ago

I know this because I've read Knuth's The TeXbook. I learnt so much about typography from that book. And yes I did find several places to use an em dash in my PhD thesis.

OliverJones 9y ago

I learned old-school printing in high school. We had a press with a flatbed and screw. More to the point, we had lower and upper cases filled with steel type, including lots of different dashes and spaces. Our teacher was a traditionalist. He taught us such things as how to justify a line of type. Narrowing a line involved switching "thicks" (nominal space slugs) for "middles" in an artful way. Widening it involved switching thicks for two "thins", and so forth. We had plenty of dash characters--we had hyphens of course, and figure dashes, and en dashes, and em dashes. Figure dashes are one en in width, with the vertical position of the visible element is designed to match the numerals in the font. This let us set a sentence like so with subtle perfection. Type designer John Baskerville (1706-1775) owned a printing-works and type foundry in Manchester. Does anybody notice this sort of thing? Probably nobody except book designers. Does anybody care? Well, my mom said she cared when I pointed it out to her. From that teacher I learned to respect the choices of the type designer and how to use those choices. His tradition--now mine--dictates that all these dashes be typeset closed, without leading or trailing spaces. In the OpenType era, a type designer may choose to leave a speck of white space around a dash, but it's up to the designer, not the typesetter. Text rendering in software like web browsers and word processors is gradually catching up to the tradition. Adobe's InDesign product does a great job of all this. Recent versions of MS Word are great improvements. It helps to know the HTML entities for these items if you'll play around with them in your web pages. — em-dash – en-dash ‒ figure dash (using en-dash is mostly acceptabe). ‑ non-breaking hyphen &emsp; one em of space &ensp; one en of space   the much-misused nonbreaking space (use an en space for  &nbsp ktksbai)   thin space (0.2-0.25em)

leephillips 9y ago
People who use [La]TeX tend to become a bit obsessive over typographic details, as well. What do you think of that program? (Very interesting comment, by the way.)
- kashyapc 9y ago
  FWIW, as a relatively novice LaTex (in combination with the Beamer program, largely for technical presentations) user, I can imagine why such people nit-pick over typography. The Computer Modern and its derivative Latin Modern fonts are beautiful---not to mention their inimitable flexibility. I'll blame two of my colleagues for indirectly 'inspiring' me to spend more time than justified, tinkering with LaTex and TikZ (it lets you produce "vector graphics from a geometric/algebraic description"). I'm not happy with the amount of time I spend with LaTex+TikZ, but I find the results to be satisfying and very convincing. Have to diligently chip away at it to get more productive with them.

the_af 9y ago

Philip K Dick, one of my favorite authors, used the em dash a great deal. In fact, I think I first noticed it in his stories. Without having been taught how to use o read it, I immediately understood PKD's intent -- and how the dash wasn't exactly necessary for anything but flavor. A mimic of other punctuation marks is an apt description! I've been abusing the em dash since.

WovenTales 9y ago

I love dashes. I do tend to avoid ems for parenthetical remarks – for those, I'll use spaced ens – but I do definitely use the longer for interjections and (roughly) semicolons, as the article describes. Where I break from convention is that, if they're marking an interjection or other interruption, I will put a space in on a single side of the dash— like so —to better demarcate the logical flow. Then again, I also put a thin space before exclamation points, etc. if I can (though unlike French, nothing if I just have full spaces), so I have other reasons to dismiss the complaints about style.

quietbritishjim 9y ago
I realise this is nothing more than my opinion, but I have to tell you that asymmetric spacing around a dash looks awful.
- WovenTales 9y ago
  Thanks for that, actually! You're the first to comment on the aesthetics rather than the "incorrect" usage. My thinking is that the dashes are part of the pragmatics of the primary, wrapping phrase, and don't actually interact with the inner one—they are therefore bound to the first and separate from the second. Whether or not it's a good look, the fact that doing so much better signposts the parenthetical makes it worth it, right? And that spacing rule is actually almost the same as with ellipses, though I'm definitely with you on that taking a while to look good to me as well. Do you think it's just being unused to that layout, or is there some deeper issue to how it looks?
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    There's a lot in what you say. Not crazy at all. They only looked awful for about 10 seconds hehe. But sure, using them to help show the meaning is a good idea. I've recently learnt to write a = b*c + d, spacing assisting clarity. Carry on, I support you in your chosen mission.

kevmo314 9y ago

> Depending on the context, the em dash can take the place of commas, parentheses, or colons—in each case to slightly different effect.” The “slightly different” part is, to me, the em dash’s appeal summarized. For me, it's of the opposite. It's like using `auto` too universally in C++: sometimes it's helpful to know the type you actually intend. Although I cede that the overuse in the article is more likely because it's discussing it and making a whimsical point. :)

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Commas also can take the place of parentheses and, sometimes, colons. Punctuation is like sentence structure in general, adaptable.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  Sure, they can (but should they?)

jasoncrawford 9y ago

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

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
twhb 9y ago
Follow-up tip: also on a Mac, go to System Preferences → Keyboard and check “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar”. Then, hit the icon just added to the menu bar and select “Show Keyboard Viewer”. With it open, hold down Option, Option+Shift, etc, to live-preview what will be typed. For symbols not there, hit Control+Command+Space to open the emoji/unicode typer. Hit the icon in the upper right to switch to a view where you can add favorites, like those arrows above. Some favorite shortcuts of mine besides the dashes: - Option+; → … (proper ellipsis) - Option+[ and Option+Shift+[ → “ and ” (admittedly, typing in an editor with smart quotes is better) - Option+] and Option+Shift+] → ‘ and ’ - Option+= → ≠ - Option+Shift+= → ± - Option+x → ≈ - Option+, → ≤ - Option+. → ≥ - Option+Shift+8 → ° (degree symbol, don’t confuse with similar characters) - Option+p → π I read something related to Perl 6 work that resonated: Unicode opens up a lot more possibilities than we’ve taken advantage of, we just don’t yet have the hardware to make it convenient. Keys labels as screens is a perennial idea; maybe once somebody does a great job of it, we’ll see those Option shortcuts frequently used.
- colanderman 9y ago
  Personally I’m a big fan of the compose key for such matters. (Both OS X and Linux.) The mnemonics I find easier to remember. • Compose . . → … • Compose < " and Compose > " → “ and ” • Compose < ' and Compose > ' → ‘ and ’ • Compose / = → ≠ • Compose + - → ± • (couldn't figure out ≈) • Compose < = → ≤ • Compose > = → ≥ • Compose o o → ° • (no compose for π)
  - anjbe 9y ago
    > (no compose for π) You can create your own compose sequences in ~/.XCompose. I mapped pi to Compose * p, taking the idea from Plan 9: https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man7/keyboard.html https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man7/keyboard.html

weeksie 9y ago

I used to be an em dash over-user but have calmed down quite a bit in that department over the last several years. My current idée fixe is the archaic ellipsis as (over) used by Céline . . . I just can't bring myself to go with the single character scrunchy version.

s4vi0r 9y ago
I cringe physically every time I see an ellipsis, they're like the calling card of the tech illiterate 30-40+ year old. I don't know why they like them so much... But they end... Every sentence or thought... Like this...
- rz2k 9y ago
  I wonder how the em-dash has avoided this. It seems to just fade into the writing and make the phrases sound like the writer wanted them to sound. Both ellipses and semicolons carry far too much baggage with them, and make a lot of people have strong feelings about the author, occasionally positive.
  - restuijs 9y ago
    I've never understood strong reactions to unusual punctuation. They serve purposes that are not well-served by anything else. Inappropriate use I can understand, but that's just like misspelling. You don't advocate for elimination of the word "loose", for example, just because it's often misused. Ellipses, for example, are useful for conveying implied but unstated thoughts. There's nothing else that functions the same way. Semicolons serve similar unique functions.
girzel 9y ago
Properly formatted (ie, in LaTeX), the real ellipsis character is the only way to go. With fixed-width fonts it's ugly, but with fixed-width fonts most of the typography is in your imagination, anyway. The hideous [dot][space][dot][space][dot][space] approach needs to die.
- 9y ago

pavel_lishin 9y ago

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...

pvg 9y ago
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.
mikeklaas 9y ago
You might consider using two hyphens if you can't bear to use the unicode character.
0xffff2 9y ago
I think that makes you decidedly new-fashioned. Typesetting has been done much longer than ASCII has existed after all.
smacktoward 9y ago
Why? Unicode is (nearly) everywhere these days and offers so much more expressiveness, why stick to ASCII?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > offers so much more expressiveness I don't know the difference between em-dash and en-dash. But I'd also wager that you don't stumble and come to a grinding halt when you see a - in the middle of a sentence, like a robot trying to parse words as arithmetic. I've never, ever once had anyone complain to me that my meaning was unclear when using a - or ' in an email, but I've seen encodings get jumbled. There's no gain for me to not stick to ascii in 99% of cases.

bmpafa 9y ago

As someone who takes flak from literati friends for his em dashin', this is a vindicating find—(!)thanks, OP. I learned to use em dashes in the military on our performance reports (sort of like an annual resume with a grade attached). For a few (dubious) reasons, every bullet had to be precisely 1 line long, +/- 0-3 spaces at EOL (we had almost as many rules regarding these bullets as we did the other kind, it seemed). Since we had a lot of (usually somewhat independent) points to jam into 1 line, we often had lots of separate clauses with a period, semi-colon[1], or em dash. The em dash always seemed to fill precisely the correct amount of space. 1: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

seandougall 9y ago

Am I the only curmudgeon who can’t get past the extra space after periods in a post about punctuation?

bmpafa 9y ago
Nope. Raging against double-spaces post-period was all the rage a few years back[1], so I'm sure it raises quite a few curmudgeonly hackles. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  I see this article quoted all the time, and every time I read it I get frustrated again. >But I actually think aesthetics are the best argument in favor of one space over two. One space is simpler, cleaner, and more visually pleasing. Okay, great? So your best argument is that you subjectively prefer it over two spaces. >The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Ah, but our valiant author sure was ready to put them in their place! I find this whole article oozes condescension and faulty logic, and I can't help but get my dander up whenever I see it referenced.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  My sixth grade teacher cured me of this right quick. “Pick up a book,” she said, “—go on.” I did so. I looked up at her but she just looked back down at me. I opened the book. I looked at the spacing. I closed the book, looked back up at my teacher and said, simply, “I see.”
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    That selfsame teacher admonished me for turning in a creative writing assignment with single sentence paragraphs in dialog: “Paragraphs consist of a topic sentence, supporting arguments, and a concluding statement,” she insisted. I looked up at her, “But... books—!” She wouldn’t have it. “When you write a 40,000 word novel you can use one sentence paragraphs.” So, 19 years later, I did.

combatentropy 9y ago

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 without fanfare, almost invisibly. The mature writer realizes his job is to tell the reader something without getting in the way. I land on the side favoring a space on each side of the dash. Unconventionally, I prefer to ASCII-encode my em dashes with three hyphens. The traditional two aren't long enough. But two is better than one. I always have to reread sentences by someone who thinks the hyphen and the dash are the same thing.

cryptonector 9y ago
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.
- seandougall 9y ago
  > While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). This convention started with typewriters, and typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts. This is also why HTML takes the liberty of reducing whitespace down to a single space character unless you go out of your way to use an  .
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    But what of sentences that end with an abbreviation that ends in a period, like "U.S."? If it's just one space after a period, it's impossible to know that the sentence has ended? I realize in books or published articles this can be typeset in a smart way to make it distinguishable, but what about in ordinary writing?

wiradikusuma 9y ago

I use mdash for "side thoughts", such as: It turned green—like I care. He kicked that person's butt—quite hard actually—without thinking of the repercussions.

radmarshallb 9y ago
I tend to use parentheses in the way that it appears most people are using the emdash (like in your second example).