6 ms·

Know the rules, fight the rules, I guess. More readable, but I’ve since regressed as tooling comes into play. Maybe it’s a good way to still use ems and differe

• msisk6 2mo ago
  Looks and readability matter in writing. I always uses spaces on either side of the em-dash; looks too crowded otherwise to my eye. I've been doing doing it that way for so long I still often use the "--" construct from way back in ascii email days. At least I've gotten past the two-spaces after a period I learned from the typewriter. Most of the time, anyway.
  • tshaddox 2mo ago
    To me it doesn't affect readability either way, but to my American English eye the surrounding spaces stands out as extremely non-standard.
  • dredmorbius 2mo ago
    In LaTeX: - A single hyphen designates ... a hyphen. - A doubled hyphen designates an en dash. - A tripled hyphen designates an em dash. <https://ladedu.com/how-to-use-en-dash-and-em-dash-in-latex/ https://ladedu.com/how-to-use-en-dash-and-em-dash-in-latex/> (I'm not aware of longer dashes native to LaTeX, though I believe doubled en or em dashes are occasionally used.) Many Markdown flavours incorporate this, such that en / em dash usage in Markdown-authored docs should not be entirely unexpected. I believe many LLMs output Markdown which is subsequently rendered, based on watching intermediate outputs and saved sessions. I tend to adopt LaTeX / Markdown semantics elsewhere.
• polynomial 2mo ago
  DFW famously put spaces around his em dashes. That being said I've noticed at least one major model seems to have started putting spaces around its em dashes.
• 98codes 2mo ago
  Every AI response I've seen that uses em dashes also includes spaces around them.