6 ms·
This is way too much pedantry and hyper-hyphen-focus. Honestly, I don't care about endashes or emdashes. I've never seen them in business or personal writing, a
by IncRnd 4y ago
This is way too much pedantry and hyper-hyphen-focus. Honestly, I don't care about endashes or emdashes. I've never seen them in business or personal writing, and I probably never will. They add nothing to anyone's communications.
Perhaps, typesetting still uses these, but that's okay. They can keep doing so, since these probably add aesthetic appeal to how flyers are designed.
I also noticed a pundit-battle brewing in the depths of the hyphen-m&ndash-soup.
The article:
Let’s make that even more clear.
THE EN DASH IS ABOUT AS WIDE AS AN UPPERCASE N; THE EM DASH IS
AS WIDE AS AN M.
Yet, from another dash-hyphen pundit... [1]
En and em dashes aren’t called that because they’re as wide as
a lowercase “n” and a lowercase “m.” They’re called that
because those are the specific typography jargon words that
refer to the height of a physical piece of type (the “em,”
also called the “mutton” to reduce confusion) and half that
height (the “en,” also called the “nut”). An em dash was
originally as wide as the font is tall.
[1] https://leffcommunications.com/2021/03/10/a-brief-history-of-dashes/ https://leffcommunications.com/2021/03/10/a-brief-history-of...
- throwingrocks 4y ago[flagged]
- IncRnd 4y agoI'm against ped:antic-pun-ctu,ation)) not against pretty, practical and productive punctuation.
- ivanstegic 4y agoFor someone who can quote Shakespeare [1] in a comment at the right time, you “…doth protest too much, methinks.” [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086851
- IncRnd 4y agoAh, I am cut to the quick. In truth, one must sometimes be cruel to be kind. To one such as I, neither the hyphen nor the dash are a dish fit for the gods. In tragic travesty, it's all Greek to me. All that glitters isn't gold! [1] [1] a bunch of Shakespeare's sayings scraped together, after they were trampled in a mosh pit.
- quietbritishjim 4y ago> I've never seen them in business or personal writing, and I probably never will. En dash is all over the place in personal/business writing, even just in email, thanks to Word and Outlook autocorrecting a hyphen to an en dash whenever it's between two spaces (rightfully in my opinion). If you've never seen it then that surely says more about what you notice than the content of what you've read. That doesn't necessarily contradict your point – if you never notice the distinction then what's the point? But it's different from how I read the implication of your post. (Funnily enough, without thinking, I put an en dash in the paragraph above by holding down on hyphen in the Android keyboard, and only caught myself after I did it.)
- IncRnd 4y ago>If you've never seen it then that surely says more about what you notice than the content of what you've read. I'll agree with this. It also brings up the point, if punctuation isn't seen - is it useful? Probably not to me - maybe yes to others.
- duopixel 4y agoQuoting Erik Spiekermann “Typography is like air. We only notice it when it's bad”
- chownie 4y agoYou might not be able to pick out the bassline in many of your favorite songs but that doesn't mean you wouldn't miss it were it not there. --- "Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are a kind of magic; their purpose is to be invisible. If the sleight of hands works, we will not notice a comma or a quotation mark but will translate each instantly into a pause or an awareness of voice [...] When the mechanics are incorrectly used, the trick is revealed and the magic fails; the reader's focus is shifted from the story to its surface." - Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
- IncRnd 4y agoThank you. It seems you misread the discussion. Following this thread, the discussion isn't about the existence or absence of punctuation. The discussion is about the case of three specific punctuation marks, which appear extremely similar if not identical. These punctuation marks are being discussed after reading an article about their differences, which are only apparent to those among us who find memorization more important than clarity. In this exact context, the question is whether all three punctuation marks are needed when literally none of them is distinctive enough as punctuation from the other two. If you read the comment to which I had replied, you will see them also make that point.
- 2-718-281-828 4y agoobsessing about mundane details like that provides certain kinds of people with a mild feeling of control over their lives.
- avgcorrection 4y agoWith what kind of telepathy did you uncover this fact?
- 2-718-281-828 4y agointrospection and observation.
- raldi 4y ago> I don't care about endashes or emdashes. I've never seen them in business or personal writing, and I probably never will. There’s an en dash in the first line of text on apple.com right now. There are en dashes, em dashes, and hyphens in the most recent press release on that site, all used correctly.
- avgcorrection 4y ago> This is way too much pedantry and hyper-hyphen-focus. Honestly, I don't care about endashes or emdashes. I've never seen them in business or personal writing, and I probably never will. They add nothing to anyone's communications. You have definitely seen them. All professional writing outlets, like e.g. the New York Times, use em-dashes, curly quotes, and other “typographic” characters that one is supposed to use in American English. And newspapers in my own country follow the typographical rules. Even though no one uses it in informal communication on HN or FB. (Well, some on HN do.)
- IncRnd 4y agoExcept, I didn't write I hadn't seen them. "I've never seen them in business or personal writing". We can discuss that I chose the word "seen", when I meant "noticed", but there is no doubt that I didn't write what you intimated. I have seen the dashes in formal writing and in newspapers. A too-hurried reading is worse than not reading at all.
- avgcorrection 4y agoOh. So “business” does not encompass “professional writing”. Good to know. And also not “formal writing”. And presumably no copy-pasted message from Word or whatever other app inserts “smart”-whatever automatically. And also not any regular old business website. (Did you think newspapers were the only ones? Just because those were the examples?) Even for personal writing: some people even take the time to insert bullet points, so “proper” punctuation is easy for them. You’re a fine one to complain about pedantry. (I guess yours is a just-right level of (cover your ass) pedantry.)
- IncRnd 4y agoI was pointing out that I don't see them in my day to day activities. You've added exactly nothing to this discussion, just written a personal attack founded on misunderstanding and make-believe.
- Sprocklem 4y agoIIRC, both of these are more or less true: > THE EN DASH IS ABOUT AS WIDE AS AN UPPERCASE N; THE EM DASH IS AS WIDE AS AN M. > They’re called that because those are the specific typography jargon words that refer to the height of a physical piece of type (the “em,” also called the “mutton” to reduce confusion) and half that height (the “en,” also called the “nut”). An em was traditionally the width of an uppercase M and an en half that (around the width of an uppercase N). Nowadays, this relationship doesn't necessarily hold: one em is equal to the font size (e.g., a 12 pt font has one em = 12 pt).