8 ms·
A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash
- kayo_20211030 10mo agoThis is super funny, in an ironic sense. The link is broken because the `em-dash` was replaced by a `dash`. The direct link is https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/Dec/a-proclamation-regarding-the-restoration-of-the-em-dash/ https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/Dec/a-proclamation-regardi...
- kayo_20211030 10mo ago... and the content is genuinely funny too.
- BeetleB 10mo agoOuch. I'll restore the original link as I can't change the submission. Restored.
- shmerl 10mo agoIt's easy to use on Linux with Compose key: Compose + --- produces — See all other combos in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose But who is using it without it in common scenarios?
- BeetleB 10mo agoIn principle, an em dash is supposed to be used where most people use hyphens. That's why Word/LaTeX make it easy to use: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-to-use https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...
- shmerl 10mo agoYeah, for sure, but without easy way to access it from the keyboard, most don't bother wasting time inserting it. Smart tools like LibreOffice and above indeed help with it, but in other scenarios, especially common browser usage that's not the case. Compose key is really useful for that, but it's not widely known outside of Linux.
- macintux 10mo agoMacOS makes it simple: option + - for en-dash, option + shift + - for em-dash.
- shmerl 10mo agoI see. What other combos does it support?
- macintux 10mo agoOption is used extensively for non-Ascii characters, a comprehensive list would be quite long. A few of the easier to remember: option + 0 for degrees º option + u for to place an umlaut over the next typed character (when it's a valid combination, anyway) ëüä option + c for cedilla ç
- shmerl 10mo agoInteresting. Kind of reinventing Compose key combos. I wonder why they didn't just reuse Compose ones from FreeBSD.
- macintux 10mo agoThis dates back to the beginning of the Mac, so it's almost 10 years older than FreeBSD. (I'm unfamiliar with other UNIX compose key tooling that may have predated it.)
- layer8 10mo agoThere are lots: https://mackeeper.com/blog/special-characters-mac-keyboard/#h2_1 https://mackeeper.com/blog/special-characters-mac-keyboard/#...
- shmerl 10mo agoYeah, looks like they developed separately from Compose combos.
- DonHopkins 10mo agoWhy stop at emdash? You should be able to type as long a dash as you want just by holding the - key down longer.
- renewiltord 10mo agoThese things are inescapable. In Nov 2019, I helped a friend move. I had a cold and not wanting to get her sick, I wore one of the N95 masks that I had so that I could bicycle in fire season. By 2022, doing the same would be a political statement.
- jimnotgym 10mo agoThis is not the first treatise on this subject to make it to the hn front page. The problem is, I don't recognise it has having ever been a big thing. I tend to read books from the early to mid 20th century. I don't notice lots of dashes. Semi-colons are just as rare. I think both were always niche.
- layer8 10mo ago> I tend to read books from the early to mid 20th century. I don't notice lots of dashes. They are more prevalent in nonfiction.
- svat 10mo agoI see them prevalent in fiction just as well. Looking at the first few pages of a few random works of fiction, continuing from my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400974 - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925: 28 on the first 10 pages https://archive.org/details/greatgatsby0000fitz_i1g1/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/greatgatsby0000fitz_i1g1/page/n9... - Love among the chickens, P. G. Wodehouse, 1909: 15 on the first 16 pages (and some of them spaced and extra long; apparently this publisher had a very “inflationary” style!) https://archive.org/details/loveamongchicken00wodeuoft/page/viii/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/loveamongchicken00wodeuoft/page/... - Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham, 1915: eight on the first ten pages https://archive.org/details/ofhumanbondage0000wsom_j3w4/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ofhumanbondage0000wsom_j3w4/page... - Howards End, E.M. Forster, 1910: at least 49 in the first ten pages https://archive.org/details/howardsend0000fors_q9r3/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/howardsend0000fors_q9r3/page/n9/...
- quuxplusone 10mo ago> some of them spaced and extra long; apparently this publisher had a very “inflationary” style! It's pretty common to see a single em-dash for the comma-like parenthetical usage (p6 etc.) and a double em-dash for the "someone's dialogue was interrupted and cut off" usage (p15). The "I'm redacting this name" usage (p11) often uses two em-dashes too, although Wodehouse('s typesetter) doesn't in this case.
- jonathaneunice 10mo agoCosigned! Em dash forever! Along with en dash for numerical ranges, true ellipsis not that three-period crap, true typographic quotes, and all the trimmings! Good typography whenever and wherever possible!
- ademarre 10mo agoI am all for using proper typographic symbols, but it is unclear what place the precomposed ellipsis U+2026—what I assume you mean by “true ellipsis”—has in that canon, especially with the compressed form it takes in most fonts.
- infogulch 10mo agoI agree we all ought to use available punctuation marks correctly. That said, I am compelled to lodge a formal complaint against quoted text arbitrarily assimilating punctuation from its surrounding context. Quoted text is a sacred verbatim reproduction of its original source. Good authors are very careful to insert [brackets] around words inserted to clarify or add context, and they never miss an oppurtunity (sic) to preserve the source's spelling or grammatical mistakes. And yet quoted text can just suck in a period, comma, or question mark from its quoted context, simply handing the quoting author the key to completely overturn the meaning of a sentence?! Nonsense! Whatever is between the quotes had better be an exact reproduction, save aforementioned exceptions and their explicit annotations. And dash that pathetic “bUt mUH aEstHeTIcS!” argument on the rocks! “But it's ugly!”, says you. “Your shallow subjective opinion of the visual appearance of so-called ugly punctuation sequences is irrelevant in the face of the immense opportunity for misbehavior this piffling preference provides perfidious publications.”, says I.
- andersa 10mo agoI completely agree, this is perhaps the least sensible part of common English syntax. "Hello," he said. "Hello", he said. Only one of these makes actual sense as a hierarchical grammar, and it's not the commonly accepted one! If enough of us do it correctly perhaps we can change it.
- efitz 10mo agoI have been using the em dash in writing forever - in Word, for example, you type a word, then space-hyphen-space, then you type another word and the hyphen is autocorrected to an em dash. I don’t regularly use en-dashes, cause I don’t know how to make them.
- Kwpolska 10mo agoWord’s autocorrect inserts en-dashes.
- xeonmc 10mo agoI’m pretty sure Word’s autocorrect for space dash space is endash not emdash, no?
- efitz 10mo agoOk then I’ve been using en dashes forever :-)
- markalby 10mo agoit’s usually space dash dash space across most word processors. I picked up the habit a couple years ago of just undoing the autocorrect to an em dash and leaving it as two dashes to avoid accusations -- now it’s stuck with me
- wdporter 10mo agoIf you're on windows and have a numeric keypad, it's alt-0150.
- drob518 10mo agoI’m in. Where do I sign?
- layer8 10mo agoYou sign like this: — drob518
- drob518 10mo agoI actually do sign my emails with an em-dash like that.
- inopinatus 10mo agoShowing advanced years perhaps but I sign mine with a line consisting solely of 2x ASCII hyphen-minus and a space. -- inopinatus
- MarkusQ 10mo agoArgggh! Seeing “tell—tale sign” when it should be “tell-tale sign” is even worse! The point isn't to use punctuation, it's to use punctuation properly!
- EGreg 10mo agoI totally agree! When I was growing up, I saw plays also use it like this: The two are in a room. -- Some guy says this -- The other guy says that You just don't see em-dashes used like they used to -- and it shows!
- schoen 10mo agoThis use in dialogue is common in Continental European languages, especially Romance languages. I think it's also common in English among writers who were influenced by other European languages?
- messe 10mo agoIIRC Joyce was a fan.
- blauditore 10mo agoWhich languages are you talking about? It looks unfamiliar to me.
- schoen 10mo agoHere's someone talking about an example in French: https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/fr-em-dash-usage.3643672/ https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/fr-em-dash-usage.364... I believe I've also seen it in Spanish and Portuguese.
- rafabulsing 10mo agoBrazilian here. That is indeed the standard way dialogue is represented in literature. We call the em-dash a "travessão".
- mountainriver 10mo agoI’ve found myself using the EM dash way more since ChatGPT. I actually really like it as a tool in sentences. Now everyone asks me what AI I’m using
- Valodim 10mo agoIs it worth it?
- sho_hn 10mo agoIf you are surrounded by a class of people that makes you genuinely second-guess the optics of your (appropriate) em-dash usage, I think that tells you a lot about what you need to change in your life. Likely you'll be happier in the company of people who know how to pick up a professionally written book or article.
- mountainriver 10mo agoI think so?
- vessenes 10mo agoOkay you had me at line—breaks. Rage. Then I saw it was civil disobedience, and I relaxed. Enjoy the em-dash lifestyle; it chose you apparently.
- gjvc 10mo agoin other news, hurrah for the oxford comma
- Ericson2314 10mo agoI love em dashes — they are just so pretty. But the en dash also needs more love. 1 out of every, say, 7–15 of the hyphens I see should be en dashes instead.
- slashdave 10mo agoWhat about the poor negative sign? Nothing is more grating to my eye than using the hyphen in a plot.
- Ericson2314 10mo agoThat one is good too, yes indeed.
- bigstrat2003 10mo agoMaybe, but the problem with both em dash and en dash is that they are impossible to type on a typical keyboard layout. The hyphen, however, is not. Thus I'm going to keep using the hyphen because it's what I have a key for.
- grensley 10mo agoI've noticed people using emdashes more in known non-AI text in what I assume is a smokescreen to maintain plausible deniability when they wholesale copy AI text. It's so interesting to me that human writing is subtly changing to mirror AI writing.
- apothegm 10mo agoOr maybe they’ve been there all along and you just notice them more now because you’re looking for them.
- grensley 10mo agoI was always looking for them because I was the weird nerd pointing out proper em dash, en dash, and hyphen usage years and years ago. It's really only devs / engineers I see doing this, probably in some quest to create an indistinguishable voice in the name of productivity or something.
- nathias 10mo agoLLMs completely ruined "—" for me, its not jus that it makes text look generated I think it revealed something deep about the use of it that was always really cringe and just has no reason to exist...
- jmye 10mo ago> I think it revealed something deep about the use of it that was always really cringe A punctuation mark was “cringe”? Seriously? Is this middle school?
- nathias 10mo agoyes, seriously, its usage was most often bad in a specific way that in most contexts it expressed a certain pretentiousness of the author
- sorcercode 10mo agoMost AI generated text doesn't seem to have spaces around the em dashes. I've been using that as a subtle distinguishing marker; as both forms are considered grammatically correct. tldr: use spaces around em dashes
- garciansmith 10mo agoHuh, I've observed the opposite, AI-generated text uses spaces most of the time. Might depend on language? Style guides I use (like Chicago) don't put spaces between em dashes so those always stand out immediately to me.
- slashdave 10mo agoThe typography I learned insists on no spaces
- BeetleB 10mo agoThe whole point is not to change one's writing style simply because it has been associated with LLMs. Don't feed the paranoia!
- sorcercode 10mo agoi think the genie is out of the box; but i stand with your sentiment!
- nikanj 10mo agoCan I have the a reverse filter, that replaces smart quotes, em-dashes and other web filth with something a proper compiler rightfully expects? Nothing like copying code samples from someone's blog, and getting weird errors because the helpful blog software made the typography “prettier“
- thorum 10mo agoThe problem isn’t the em dashes, it’s the overuse of em dashes. Same for all the other ChatGPT-isms - they’re fine when used occasionally for effect, but there’s no variety. It’s always the same punctuation, same grammatical structures, same rhetorical moves, same paragraph lengths... That’s not what writing is supposed to be like and it becomes very grating after a while.
- slashdave 10mo agoI mean, you just used a spurious one in your post. A period would have been fine.
- submeta 10mo agoI used em-dashes regularly. However, since they’ve become associated with LLM-generated text, I’ve stopped using them to avoid the appearance of AI assistance.
- sho_hn 10mo agoSounds like a race to the bottom to me. If you know how to write well, keep at it.
- phlakaton 10mo agoI'm on vacation so don't have my copy of Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style at hand, but I'm not sure he would subscribe to this manifesto. Now if you were willing to switch to en-dashes, maybe we could overlook the overexuberance. ;-)
- sho_hn 10mo agoI keep being surprised this is such a big deal on HN, and I have begun to wonder whether this is just a uniquely American conversation. I grew up among European and other international English speakers and writers, and no one blinks an eye at a semicolon or an em-dash. I'm not saying they use them frequently or overuse them, they simply know how to use them correctly and use them well. Writing without either is like ... cooking without garlic. You can, but it certainly makes affairs a lot more boring. Now I understand that America has gone through 1-2 generations of English language teachers drilling their students to simplify, simplify, simplify and emulate the ideal of Hemingway. Is that where this all comes from, do you think?
- idle_zealot 10mo ago> teachers drilling their students to simplify, simplify, simplify and emulate the ideal of Hemingway. Is that where this comes from? No. It comes from the fact that Americans are functionally illiterate and genuinely have no idea how to use or interpret em dashes or semicolons. They don't use them and don't expect anyone else to use them. The only time Americans see these punctuations are in the handful of classic books they're required to skim to pass high school English class.
- pessimizer 10mo agoWhy are Europeans so high on their own farts?
- idle_zealot 10mo agoIn 2023 only 44% of American adults read at a high school level. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp#a-first-look-at-2023-u-s-piaac-overall-results https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp#...
- xboxnolifes 10mo agoThe drop from 2017 to 2023 is worrying, but my first reaction is to ask if that is only in the US or is it global? I couldn't find 2023 data for other countries, but the 2012-2017 PIAAC literacy data puts USA roughly in line with the rest of the world. I know people dunking on American literacy isn't new, it goes back easily to 2012 or earlier. If the US is illiterate, then so is much of the world. screenshot for convenience: https://i.imgur.com/IMrCZch.png https://i.imgur.com/IMrCZch.png data explorer: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/ideuspiaac/report.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/ideuspiaac/report.aspx
- ludamn 10mo ago[dead]
- beasthacker 10mo agoA weak judgment betrays itself in the indiscriminate use of fine punctuation; for when the em-dash is made universal, it ceases to be distinguished, and becomes merely another form of hyphen. Let the em-dash remain upon the height of style. Let the hyphen toil in the shade of the valley. And let the en-dash—patient, capable, and unjustly overlooked—at last be admitted to polite society, where it may properly mediate matters of form–function.
- aniijbod 10mo ago"WHEREAS, the Large Language Model has merely mimicked a sophistication it cannot truly possess": says who(m)?
- BeetleB 10mo agoSays the LLM itself. (Yes, of course the proclamation was written by Gemini. I gave it some guidance - that's it).
- bigstrat2003 10mo agoSays anyone who has seen them at work. They very obviously do not possess intelligence with how often they fall over at basic tests that would never trip up a human. For example, the "how many r's are in the word 'strawberry'" test. No person who is literate in English would fail this, but LLMs do (or did, until the companies making them put in a kludge because they were embarrassed by how it revealed the stupidity of their models).
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- wavemode 10mo agoI've seen far more people complaining about people believing em dashes indicate AI, than people who actually believe that em dashes automatically indicate AI with no other evidence.
- pessimizer 10mo agoI used to use em-dashes online to seem smart but now that internet addicts are defending them in order to be contrarian about AI slop, I'm abandoning them altogether. I have to finally admit that I actually think they're stupid and I don't want tiny differences in the length of a featureless horizontal line to be grammatically significant. Especially when there's never any context where you can create a minimal pair between two utterances that would give them a different meaning depending on which dash was used. An em-dash is just a stuck up en-dash. I even hate the terms "em-dash" and "en-dash" now, after the typographical snobbery that flooded the culture for about a decade after web fonts got invented and standardized. Frontend developers and web designers started getting big salaries and buying fancy wines and whiskies, so I had to hear the word "Helvetica" 50x a day.
- pwdisswordfishy 10mo agoI will now be adopting em—dashes everywhere, just to spite people who are contrarian about the backlash against the backlash against LLMs using them
- inopinatus 10mo agoI have adopted the double-em dash ⸺ to clarify what I’m ―not―. Choose your poison at https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Pd https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Pd
- julbov 10mo agoWell the em dash remains difficult to type on a normal keyboard, this is a major reason why I don't use it, and why I think it will never get widespread adoption
- schoen 10mo agoI type Compose Hyphen Hyphen, which is pretty quick and easy! (One might feel that normal keyboards don't have a compose key.)
- smnrchrds 10mo ago> Well the em dash remains difficult to type on a normal keyboard Not on Mac: hyphen/dash: - En-dash: ⌥- Em-dash: ⇧⌥-
- bdangubic 10mo agothats a lot of effort :)
- MarkLowenstein 10mo agoSomething about people successful with computers makes them quick to claim something is easy based on the number of steps needed, without regard to the ease of remembering all the arbitrary or sometimes contra-pattern steps required.
- DonHopkins 10mo agoI'm naming my next cat Emdash!
- quuxplusone 10mo agoSeems somewhat reminiscent of the "Petition of Who and Which" (1711), Spectator #78: https://books.google.com/books?id=c6MIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA86 https://books.google.com/books?id=c6MIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA86 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=20844 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=20844 But if I understand https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395467 correctly, this em-dash broadside was itself AI-generated, so any similarity to the above might be completely unintended by the human who wrote the prompt. (Anyway, the similarity is superficial or spiritual at best.)
- mark-r 10mo agoI'd love to use proper dashes more often, but my keyboard only produces ASCII. Getting them is more trouble than it's worth.