Hacker News Reader

Comment by yardstick | Hacker News Reader

Just add spaces. Sorted.

“Sometimes writing for money - rather than for art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”

A common substitution for emdash is -- which are two hyphens with spaces around them.

Personally, I think two hyphens also looks better than just one, and it conveys that you really intended it to mean emdash rather than hyphen.

This is similar to how it's typeset in TeX as well: two for en, three for em.

I have used two hyphens, but I appreciated text editors collapsed them into an (em-) dash.

Hyphens are simply for connected-words while dashes are -- for better of worse -- to make asides.

> Personally, I think two hyphens also looks better than just one

It's context-dependent. (Aside: you wouldn't write "context--dependent", which is the use case of the hyphen.)

Ostensibly the en dash is primarily used for ranges, although that's a case where I'm inconsistent. I won't typically write "A - Z" or the technically correct "A–Z", as I think in that case I tend to write "A-Z", using a simple hyphen. I certainly won't write "A -- Z".

The em dash is even wider—it's not typically mistaken for a hyphen.

Sometimes I write A->Z.

Em-dashes add a bit of a pause. And having them longer and taking a bit more of horizontal space makes it more intuitive. They also break a sentence into parts. Having them easily distinguishable helps navigate text and reduces overhead. Just like periods or paragraph breaks help you see parts of a text, or syntax highlighting helps you see lexemes in a program.

Using just one dash for everything will be readable in a text message or comment. But not in a (complicated) book, because there the benefit of these small things gets multiplied by the scale of the book.

> They also break a sentence into parts.

IMHO, this is the main determination on when I decide to use em-dashes: is the text between them an aside of some kind? An alternatives would be to use parentheses.

Personally I do not find that " - " as the GP suggests enough of a visual cue as "—". And on macOS using different dashes is fairly straight-forward:

* hyphen: the key next to zero, "-"

* en-dash: alt/option-"-": –

* em-dash: shift-alt/option-"-": —

Some apps (e.g. Mail) auto-convert double-"-" into an em-dash as well.

Good to see OSX people thought about this.

On Linux, one needs to enable Compose key (keyboard layout settings). After that, you get default sequences like --. and --- for en- and em-dashes.

Since I am now a hyper-hyphen-partisan-pundit after reading that blog post - I'd like to comment on your hyper-hyphenated comment.

> “Sometimes writing for money - rather than for art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”

To me this looks like a cryptic-case of the corrective comma.

“Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.”

Your first sentence should also use a comma rather than the wrong dash.

That's why I used the dash...

The way I was taught, you use the comma for a brief aside--em dashes are used for a larger diversion (and parenthesis are for the most tenuous connections.)

In other words a reader should be able to skip reading the contents of parenthesis with negligible impact on the context or meaning of the sentence. They should be able to skip reading the contents of em-dash-seperated text without changing the meaning of the sentence. And text between commas should be considered integral to the sentence, while secondary to the primary gist.

What you reference is that commas are used to set off non-restrictive clauses, where the meaning of the sentence is clear without the additional clause. Though, the non-restrictive clause provides additional description of a word in the main sentence.

Such as:

Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.

Other than that, many people have come up with many writing styles. We mostly seem to be able to understand each other, so we are "all good".

“Sometimes writing for money - I have other aims besides art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”

En space, em space, three-per-em space, four-per-em space, six-per-em space, figure space, punctuation space, thin space, hair space, ideographic space, or Ogham space?

I have written and read text for decades without knowing the difference between those, so whatever space one gets when pressing the spacebar seems to do the job just fine. And if in doubt LaTeX etc will handle the rest well enough if I care about sub-pixel precision of some margins.

This is what I do. I don’t see the problem here. I don’t see the need to adopt additional characters.

It's a tradition from hand-set paper print which is now largely obsolete.

Spaces can cause word wrap that can leave a dash at the end or beginning of a line, which is not beautiful. A spaceless em dash doesn't have the wrapping issues while retaining legibility. You could argue that that's a problem with word wrap algorithms, not punctuation, but that situation is not going to change any time soon.

In German that’s the way it’s done: en-dash with spaces, em-dashes (basically) don’t exist.

I use em dashes with spaces in German (and English) all the time — I just like it better and don't care about arbitrary rules and traditions.

Yea em dash with spaces looks better to me too, I find that it’s harder to read if the em dash is there without surrounding spaces. Looks too cramped, not separated enough.

I have never understood the classical rule of no spaces around em-dashes. If you’re going to use fancy dashes at all, an em-dash represents a clear pause, a break in thought — something more robust than a mere comma. Typesetting an em-dash sometimes literally touching the words on either side has the opposite effect, visually connecting those words rather than separating them, and unlike a lot of the typographical snobbery we sometimes engage in, that one is a well-known (at least to designers) effect of proximity. Personally I prefer a thin space rather than a full one in media where it’s possible, purely for cosmetic reasons, but I’d rather have a normal space than none.

However, it is the en-dash, properly, rather than the hyphen. I quite like that punctuation.

Now, anyone typing random texts to a friend or a few need not care, but I think people that write in a professional capacity to more than a few people should know and care.

I think that is not really true? There is the "Gedankenstrich" and one can see it in texts. Or do you mean, that it is so rare, that German language almost does not use it? I think that depends on the writer.

Yes, and the Gedankenstrich is usually set as en-dash with spaces around, only rarely as em-dash. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbgeviertstrich#Gedankenstri...

Hum, a hyphen is still an entity of its own (it may be even a short, slanted dash in some fonts), then there's the en-dash for association (e.g. "ZDF – Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen"), and there's the "Gedankenstrich", which performs more like a separator. Three typographical entities to express three different concepts. (But there's a tendency of mixing the en-dash with spaces and the "Gedankenstrich", as the latter also comes with surrounding spaces, which may appear overly exaggerated in some fonts.)

Sure. As far as I‘m aware the Gedankenstrich is usually set as en-dash with spaces in German, though [1].

1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbgeviertstrich#Gedankenstri...

If you’re going to do that, en dashes look nicer (as explained in the article):

“Sometimes writing for money – rather than for art or pleasure – is really quite enjoyable.”

Is this the yardstick from The Grid? If so, hope all is well :) (and if not, I also hope all is well)

Sorry that’s not me, but thanks for the well wishes and I hope all is well for you too!

Or commas (?). "Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable."

yup

Reply on news.ycombinator.com