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That's backwards. People in that age bracket grew up with computers where the em dash was not in the character set at all, and typewriters and terminals only ha
by reaperducer 1y ago
That's backwards. People in that age bracket grew up with computers where the em dash was not in the character set at all, and typewriters and terminals only had a minus key.
I guess you weren't there. We did em-dashes on typewriters. We just turned the platen knob down one click, typed _, and turned it back.
- ted_dunning 1y agoNone of us at our house did that.
- reaperducer 1y agoThat doesn't mean it didn't happen. Your house is not the only house. Moreover, your home is not representative of the millions of typewriters in businesses around the world.
- npsomaratna 1y agoAnecdotally, what I've seen is that folks who learned typing in the 80s and earlier use two dashes '--' instead of the em-dash (although modern word processors seem to replace this combination with the em-dash). Something else I've noticed is their tendency to use two blank spaces between sentences. I'm a self-taught typist, with all the quirks that comes with (can type programming stuff very accurately at a 100+ WPM; can type normal stuff at a high WPM as well, but the error rate goes up).
- Breza 1y agoI learned to type in the nineties and I used two hyphens. I also learned to put two spaces between sentences but dropped that in the oughts.