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An example from the article: Looks good: “Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.” Unreadable: “Sometimes writi
by frizlab 4y ago
An example from the article:
Looks good: “Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.”
Unreadable: “Sometimes writing for money-rather than for art or pleasure-is really quite enjoyable.”
Yes, punctation does matter.
(In French the em-dash is almost inexistant; we use parenthesis instead usually.)
- askvictor 4y agoI disagree that the first example looks good. Both cases would be better with spaces, which kind of renders the em dash unnecessary.
- ghaff 4y agoSome places I write for use the em-dash with spaces and some without. I try to remember which is which but I often forget.
- 83457 4y agoI just use commas or parens.
- jameshart 4y agoHaving multiple options for how to offset parenthetical asides, far from being redundant (or even confusing), offers us—as writers and readers—more opportunities to express the tonal variations (or nuances) that we would – in spoken language – communicate through our voice and body language; moreover it lets us vary the visual, aesthetic quality of our prose – which is as much a part of the experience of reading as comprehension is.
- wholinator2 4y agoIs this a written excerpt from a text book or something? This single sentence makes more sense than many of the arguments I've seen previously.
- jameshart 4y agoNah, it’s just a deliberate hodge-podge of a sentence where I threw in every subclause I could to try to illustrate the point.
- IIAOPSW 4y agoThe "unreadable" sample is very much readable. We can all read it. No one is tripping up trying to figure out what a "money-rather" is.
- floodle 4y agoNot for me. It's readable, but my brain has to do more work. When I get to "money-rather" my brain trips up slightly, and then I'm confused until the next dash, then I go back and figure it out. All possible and dealt with in under a second, but in the first example with the longer dash my brain recognises a parenthesis and I take a little "breath pause" before carrying on.
- zelphirkalt 4y agoAlso consider, that eye movement is not always linear from left to right. But I agree, brain has to do more work and it is slightly confusing.
- OGWhales 4y agoI can read it, but it definitely trips me up.
- yardstick 4y agoJust add spaces. Sorted. “Sometimes writing for money - rather than for art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”
- kimburgess 4y agoEn space, em space, three-per-em space, four-per-em space, six-per-em space, figure space, punctuation space, thin space, hair space, ideographic space, or Ogham space?
- alpaca128 4y agoI have written and read text for decades without knowing the difference between those, so whatever space one gets when pressing the spacebar seems to do the job just fine. And if in doubt LaTeX etc will handle the rest well enough if I care about sub-pixel precision of some margins.
- knert 4y agoThis is what I do. I don’t see the problem here. I don’t see the need to adopt additional characters.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoIt's a tradition from hand-set paper print which is now largely obsolete.
- greenicon 4y agoIn German that’s the way it’s done: en-dash with spaces, em-dashes (basically) don’t exist.
- atoav 4y agoI use em dashes with spaces in German (and English) all the time — I just like it better and don't care about arbitrary rules and traditions.
- dmm10 4y agoOthers have mentioned using spaces with an en-dash or hyphen instead of an em-dash. Having used a typewriter -back in the day- I learned to produce text like this. How I learned the Unreadable: “Sometimes writing for money -rather than for art or pleasure- is really quite enjoyable.” To the teacher I learned from this was a standard way of punctuating on a typewriter.
- ghaff 4y agoI use em-dashes and parentheses somewhat differently but you can mostly substitute the latter for the former.
- seszett 4y ago> In French the em-dash is almost inexistant; we use parenthesis instead usually. The only French-speaking place I've seen em-dashes used in daily life was Québec. For some (good) reason, it seems administration took a lot of care in using correct typography. My voting district for example was Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (the first dash being an en-dash, and the second one a hyphen) and I was always amazed at how all communication actually used these two different dashes. I can't imagine this level of care in French or Belgian official communication.
- wlonkly 4y ago(By way of explanation, the parent commenter's voting district covered the Mercier and the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhoods.)
- miramba 4y agoIt‘s not unreadable, just a tad more difficult. And as others have pointed out, there are other ways of making it easier again than using a specific character. But the real point is: The information transported in both examples did not change its meaning and will be understood by the reader / receiver in both cases. If it‘s not, it matters. As long as it is, it‘s pedantic.
- dsego 4y agoRight, the dash length seems more of an aesthetic choice, like a drop cap or something.
- biztos 4y agoLooks better: “Sometimes writing for money — rather than for art or pleasure — is really quite enjoyable.” Punctuation matters, but space -- the "zeroth punctuation mark" -- matters more! The author does discuss spacing the dashes but is, given the overall point of the article, surprisingly noncommittal.
- ehsankia 4y agoWouldn't the alternative rather be to use commas there, not a hyphen? "Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable." In your head, do you read those differently?
- jameshart 4y agoPersonally, I think this sentence would benefit from a comma before the ‘or’. And in that case we could probably benefit from a clearer way of setting aside the parenthetical. “Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.” – this seems awkward to me. This version, though: “Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art, or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.” Isn’t that more fluid?
- noizejoy 4y ago> “Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.” I think that changes the meaning, since it’s now a list of 3 items with an Oxford comma, rather than two lists, with the first list having 1 item, and the second list having 2 items. And I’m having a rough time even making sense of such revised meaning. Expressed as pseudo-code, I read the original intent of that sentence as: “money and not(art or pleasure) == enjoyable” and that can be broken into “((money and not art) or (money and not pleasure)) == enjoyable
- lencastre 4y agoAlso in Portugal, just use parenthesis (like when you would insert an idea into a sentence) and it still reads fine.
- nephanth 4y ago> In French the em-dash is almost inexistant; we use parenthesis instead usually. French uses em-dashes ("tiret cadratin") or en-dashes ("tiret semi-cadratin") for dialogue. Like so: – bonjour, dit-elle, comment allez vous? – bonsoir, repondit-on. Ça va ça vient, et vous? – bien