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Yea 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 separ
by r2222 4y ago
Yea 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.