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In German that’s the way it’s done: en-dash with spaces, em-dashes (basically) don’t exist.
by greenicon 4y ago
In 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.
- r2222 4y agoYea em dash with spaces looks better to me too, I find that it’s harder to read if the em dash is there without surrounding spaces. Looks too cramped, not separated enough.
- Chris_Newton 4y agoI have never understood the classical rule of no spaces around em-dashes. If you’re going to use fancy dashes at all, an em-dash represents a clear pause, a break in thought — something more robust than a mere comma. Typesetting an em-dash sometimes literally touching the words on either side has the opposite effect, visually connecting those words rather than separating them, and unlike a lot of the typographical snobbery we sometimes engage in, that one is a well-known (at least to designers) effect of proximity. Personally I prefer a thin space rather than a full one in media where it’s possible, purely for cosmetic reasons, but I’d rather have a normal space than none.
- FabHK 4y agoHowever, it is the en-dash, properly, rather than the hyphen. I quite like that punctuation. Now, anyone typing random texts to a friend or a few need not care, but I think people that write in a professional capacity to more than a few people should know and care.
- zelphirkalt 4y agoI think that is not really true? There is the "Gedankenstrich" and one can see it in texts. Or do you mean, that it is so rare, that German language almost does not use it? I think that depends on the writer.
- greenicon 4y agoYes, and the Gedankenstrich is usually set as en-dash with spaces around, only rarely as em-dash. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbgeviertstrich#Gedankenstrich https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbgeviertstrich#Gedankenstri...
- masswerk 4y agoHum, a hyphen is still an entity of its own (it may be even a short, slanted dash in some fonts), then there's the en-dash for association (e.g. "ZDF – Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen"), and there's the "Gedankenstrich", which performs more like a separator. Three typographical entities to express three different concepts. (But there's a tendency of mixing the en-dash with spaces and the "Gedankenstrich", as the latter also comes with surrounding spaces, which may appear overly exaggerated in some fonts.)
- greenicon 4y agoSure. As far as I‘m aware the Gedankenstrich is usually set as en-dash with spaces in German, though [1]. 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbgeviertstrich#Gedankenstrich https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbgeviertstrich#Gedankenstri...