Hacker News Reader

Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

I 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!

View on HN

They used two hyphens -- instead because typewriters don't have em dashes —.

Sure, but that's not what I was talking about :)

This 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?

Which languages are you talking about? It looks unfamiliar to me.

Here's someone talking about an example in French: https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/fr-em-dash-usage.364...

I believe I've also seen it in Spanish and Portuguese.

Brazilian here. That is indeed the standard way dialogue is represented in literature. We call the em-dash a "travessão".

I think Romanian uses that too and it just occurred to me that "linie de dialog" is not dash, but em dash.

IIRC Joyce was a fan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com