4 ms·

I grew up in the UK, and have always used space, minus, space. The first keyboard I used was my dad's typewriter, and I don't recall it having any 'dash' other

I grew up in the UK, and have always used space, minus, space. The first keyboard I used was my dad's typewriter, and I don't recall it having any 'dash' other that the minus sign.

KPGv2 2y ago
space, minus, space is on the same level as manually typing two spaces after a period
- lxgr 2y ago
  How so? One is the only way to approximate an en or em dash on a typewriter or in a charset that doesn’t have one, the other seems like a workaround of a typesetting bug at best.
  - Propelloni 2y ago
    -, --, --- is, IIRC, how it is done in LaTex and would be exceedingly simple to do on a typewriter. That being said, to break up sentences I use " -- " because I think it looks nicer than "---". I'll go now ;)
    - lxgr 2y ago
      LaTeX is a markup language though, not ASCII art. I can get behind two dashes as a substitute if no en dash is available, but three seems too much and looks like halfway to a horizontal line to me ;)
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  Until ~10 years ago, I used to type two spaces after a period.
  - Daneel_ 2y ago
    I still do, and I maintain that it’s easier to read text with double spaces after periods.
    - _emacsomancer_ 2y ago
      TeX puts more space after periods/fullstops (which is why you're supposed to do special markup or other measures to mark '.' in the middle of sentences which aren't sentence-enders (e.g. like e.g.)). But it's generally smaller than the equivalent of two manual spaces. (A nice thing in (La)TeX is that one could follow the "two spaces after a full-stop" rule, which then has the advantage of being an explicit marking for sentence boundaries (which your editor might be able to navigate; Emacs has a convention of assuming two spaces after a sentence-ending '.'), but then the TeX typesetting will take care of making it look right. I lost the habit of actually doing this, for better or worse, except when flycheck/checkdoc/package-linter.el makes me do it for docstrings.)
    - globnomulous 2y ago
      I used to feel similarly. Now I find the double space a visual distraction that doesn't in any way improve readability. The effect of the double space is, I suspect, a product of the reader's expectations: if you expect it, its absence creates mental work, detracting from readability; if you don't expect it, its presence is what creates mental work.
  - asveikau 2y ago
    I'm still doing it when I am typing at a physical keyboard. Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. You can tell when I've edited something on both a phone and a physical keyboard, based on the inconsistent use of spaces.
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. Haha I learned to type organically, and it was only in my mid-40s that I retrained myself to type the correct way. It took something like 40 hours of practice on keybr.com before I could get close enough to my regular typing speed, such that I could switch over to the 'correct' method without it impacting my work. Retraining myself to stop doing double-spaces took maybe a week.
      - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
        Most word processors can be configured to flag double spaces. That gives feedback to break the habit.
robin_reala 2y ago
en-US style is a single em-dash. en-GB style is a single en-dash with spaces on either side.
Propelloni 2y ago
I was under the impression that you do "-" for hyphen, "--" for En dash, and "---" for Em dash. IIRC, LaTeX (or maybe the editor, it has been some time) even helpfully changes that for you to the correct dash.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  Google Docs also does these replacements.
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > I was under the impression that you do "-" for hyphen, "--" for En dash, and "---" for Em dash. IIRC, LaTeX (or maybe the editor, it has been some time) even helpfully changes that for you to the correct dash. The conversion of '--' to an en dash and '---' to an em dash is done by the TeX compiler, and appears in the rendered file, but I think that most TeX editors don't change the TeX code itself. (This is distinct from XeTeX-based compilers, which can handle non-ASCII Unicode characters like the em dash '—' directly in the source.) (I think that the article's point is that, in some fonts, -- (two hyphens) is literally the (approximate) size of an em dash, not that it is always understood as meaning an em dash. At least in my font, --- (three hyphens) is far too long to literally look like an em dash: --- -- — – (in order, three hyphens, two hyphens, em dash, en dash).)
Finnucane 2y ago
British typesetting style is a little different from US style in the way dashes are presented. In the UK, you might see a thin-space--en-dash---thin-space where a US typesetter would use a em-dash. Typewriter style generally follows books style. Since typesetters no longer use an extra space after punctuation, it's vestigial in typing.

I grew up in the UK, and have always used space, minus, space. The first keyboard I used was my dad's typewriter, and I don't recall it having any 'dash' other that the minus sign.

KPGv2 2y ago

space, minus, space is on the same level as manually typing two spaces after a period

lxgr 2y ago
How so? One is the only way to approximate an en or em dash on a typewriter or in a charset that doesn’t have one, the other seems like a workaround of a typesetting bug at best.
- Propelloni 2y ago
  -, --, --- is, IIRC, how it is done in LaTex and would be exceedingly simple to do on a typewriter. That being said, to break up sentences I use " -- " because I think it looks nicer than "---". I'll go now ;)
  - lxgr 2y ago
    LaTeX is a markup language though, not ASCII art. I can get behind two dashes as a substitute if no en dash is available, but three seems too much and looks like halfway to a horizontal line to me ;)
rahimnathwani 2y ago
Until ~10 years ago, I used to type two spaces after a period.
- Daneel_ 2y ago
  I still do, and I maintain that it’s easier to read text with double spaces after periods.
  - _emacsomancer_ 2y ago
    TeX puts more space after periods/fullstops (which is why you're supposed to do special markup or other measures to mark '.' in the middle of sentences which aren't sentence-enders (e.g. like e.g.)). But it's generally smaller than the equivalent of two manual spaces. (A nice thing in (La)TeX is that one could follow the "two spaces after a full-stop" rule, which then has the advantage of being an explicit marking for sentence boundaries (which your editor might be able to navigate; Emacs has a convention of assuming two spaces after a sentence-ending '.'), but then the TeX typesetting will take care of making it look right. I lost the habit of actually doing this, for better or worse, except when flycheck/checkdoc/package-linter.el makes me do it for docstrings.)
  - globnomulous 2y ago
    I used to feel similarly. Now I find the double space a visual distraction that doesn't in any way improve readability. The effect of the double space is, I suspect, a product of the reader's expectations: if you expect it, its absence creates mental work, detracting from readability; if you don't expect it, its presence is what creates mental work.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I'm still doing it when I am typing at a physical keyboard. Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. You can tell when I've edited something on both a phone and a physical keyboard, based on the inconsistent use of spaces.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. Haha I learned to type organically, and it was only in my mid-40s that I retrained myself to type the correct way. It took something like 40 hours of practice on keybr.com before I could get close enough to my regular typing speed, such that I could switch over to the 'correct' method without it impacting my work. Retraining myself to stop doing double-spaces took maybe a week.
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      Most word processors can be configured to flag double spaces. That gives feedback to break the habit.

robin_reala 2y ago

en-US style is a single em-dash. en-GB style is a single en-dash with spaces on either side.

Propelloni 2y ago

I was under the impression that you do "-" for hyphen, "--" for En dash, and "---" for Em dash. IIRC, LaTeX (or maybe the editor, it has been some time) even helpfully changes that for you to the correct dash.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
Google Docs also does these replacements.
JadeNB 2y ago
> I was under the impression that you do "-" for hyphen, "--" for En dash, and "---" for Em dash. IIRC, LaTeX (or maybe the editor, it has been some time) even helpfully changes that for you to the correct dash. The conversion of '--' to an en dash and '---' to an em dash is done by the TeX compiler, and appears in the rendered file, but I think that most TeX editors don't change the TeX code itself. (This is distinct from XeTeX-based compilers, which can handle non-ASCII Unicode characters like the em dash '—' directly in the source.) (I think that the article's point is that, in some fonts, -- (two hyphens) is literally the (approximate) size of an em dash, not that it is always understood as meaning an em dash. At least in my font, --- (three hyphens) is far too long to literally look like an em dash: --- -- — – (in order, three hyphens, two hyphens, em dash, en dash).)

Finnucane 2y ago

British typesetting style is a little different from US style in the way dashes are presented. In the UK, you might see a thin-space--en-dash---thin-space where a US typesetter would use a em-dash. Typewriter style generally follows books style. Since typesetters no longer use an extra space after punctuation, it's vestigial in typing.