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I cannot remember ever reading a book where there was a space around the dashes.

by oniony 11mo ago

kuschku 11mo ago
That depends on the language — whereas German puts spaces around —, English afaik usually doesn’t. Similarly, French puts spaces before and after ? ! while English and German only put spaces afterwards. [EDIT: I originally wrote that French treats . , ! ? specially. In reality, french only treats ? and ! specially.]
- iLoveOncall 11mo ago
  French doesn't put one before the period.
- bratwurst3000 11mo ago
  french does "," and "." like the british and germans the rest is space befor space after
- greenicon 11mo ago
  In German you use en-dashes with spaces, whereas in English it’s em-dashes without spaces. Some people dislike em-dashes in English though and use en-dashes with spaces as well.
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > whereas in English it’s em-dashes without spaces Didn't know! Woot, I win! Why does AI have a preference for doing it differently?
  - dragonwriter 11mo ago
    In English, typically em-dashes are set without spaces or with thin spaces when used to separate appositives/parentheticals (though that style isn't universal even in professional print, there are places that aet them open, and en-dashes set open can also be used in this role); when representating an interruption, they generally have no space before but frequently have space following. And other uses have other patterns.
  - bloak 11mo ago
    In British English en-dashes with spaces is more common than em-dashes without spaces, I think, but I don't have any data for that, just a general impression.
LoganDark 11mo ago
Technically, there are supposed to be hair spaces around the dashes, not regular spaces. They're small enough to be sometimes confused for kerning.
- cachius 11mo ago
  Em dashes used as parenthetical dividers, and en dashes when used as word joiners, are usually set continuous with the text. However, such a dash can optionally be surrounded with a hair space, U+200A, or thin space, U+2009 or HTML named entities &hairsp; and   These spaces are much thinner than a normal space (except in a monospaced (non-proportional) font), with the hair space in particular being the thinnest of horizontal whitespace characters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character#Hair_spaces_around_dashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character#Hair_spac... Typographers usually add space to the left side of the following marks: : ; ” ’ ! ? / ) ] } * ¿ › » @ ® ™ ℓ ° ¡ ' " † + = ÷ - – — And they usually add space to the right of these: “ ‘ / ( [ { > ≥ < ≤ £ $ ¢ € ‹ « √ μ # @ + = ÷ - – — https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/micro-typography-space-kern-punctuation-marks-symbols/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/micro-typography-sp... 1. (letterpress typography) A piece of metal type used to create the narrowest space. 2. (typography, US) The narrowest space appearing between letters and punctuation. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hair_space https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hair_space Now I'd like to see how the metal type looks like, but ehm... it's difficult googling it. Also a whole collection of space types and what they're called in other languages.

I cannot remember ever reading a book where there was a space around the dashes.

by oniony 11mo ago

I cannot remember ever reading a book where there was a space around the dashes.

That depends on the language — whereas German puts spaces around —, English afaik usually doesn’t. Similarly, French puts spaces before and after ? ! while English and German only put spaces afterwards. [EDIT: I originally wrote that French treats . , ! ? specially. In reality, french only treats ? and ! specially.]

iLoveOncall 11mo ago
French doesn't put one before the period.
bratwurst3000 11mo ago
french does "," and "." like the british and germans the rest is space befor space after
greenicon 11mo ago
In German you use en-dashes with spaces, whereas in English it’s em-dashes without spaces. Some people dislike em-dashes in English though and use en-dashes with spaces as well.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > whereas in English it’s em-dashes without spaces Didn't know! Woot, I win! Why does AI have a preference for doing it differently?
- dragonwriter 11mo ago
  In English, typically em-dashes are set without spaces or with thin spaces when used to separate appositives/parentheticals (though that style isn't universal even in professional print, there are places that aet them open, and en-dashes set open can also be used in this role); when representating an interruption, they generally have no space before but frequently have space following. And other uses have other patterns.
- bloak 11mo ago
  In British English en-dashes with spaces is more common than em-dashes without spaces, I think, but I don't have any data for that, just a general impression.

LoganDark 11mo ago

Technically, there are supposed to be hair spaces around the dashes, not regular spaces. They're small enough to be sometimes confused for kerning.

cachius 11mo ago
Em dashes used as parenthetical dividers, and en dashes when used as word joiners, are usually set continuous with the text. However, such a dash can optionally be surrounded with a hair space, U+200A, or thin space, U+2009 or HTML named entities &hairsp; and   These spaces are much thinner than a normal space (except in a monospaced (non-proportional) font), with the hair space in particular being the thinnest of horizontal whitespace characters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character#Hair_spaces_around_dashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character#Hair_spac... Typographers usually add space to the left side of the following marks: : ; ” ’ ! ? / ) ] } * ¿ › » @ ® ™ ℓ ° ¡ ' " † + = ÷ - – — And they usually add space to the right of these: “ ‘ / ( [ { > ≥ < ≤ £ $ ¢ € ‹ « √ μ # @ + = ÷ - – — https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/micro-typography-space-kern-punctuation-marks-symbols/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/micro-typography-sp... 1. (letterpress typography) A piece of metal type used to create the narrowest space. 2. (typography, US) The narrowest space appearing between letters and punctuation. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hair_space https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hair_space Now I'd like to see how the metal type looks like, but ehm... it's difficult googling it. Also a whole collection of space types and what they're called in other languages.