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Comment by kimixa | Hacker News Reader

As a brit I'd say we tend to use "en-dashes", slightly shorter versions - so more similar to a hyphen and so often typed like that - with spaces either side.

I never saw em-dashes—the longer version with no space—outside of published books and now AI.

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The en-dash is also highly worthy!

Just to say, though, we em-dashers do have pre-GPT receipts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673869

There are British style manuals (e.g., the Guardian’s) that prefer em-dashes for roughly the same set of uses they tend to perferred for in US style guides, but it is mixed between em-dashes and en-dashes (both usually set open), while all the influential American style guides prefer em-dashes (but split, for digressive/parenthetical use, between setting them closed [e.g., Chicago Manual] and open [e.g., AP Style].)

Besides the LaTeX use, on Linux if you have gone into your keyboard options and configured a rarely-used key to be your Compose key (I like to use the "menu" key for this purpose, or right Alt if on a keyboard with no "menu" key), you can type Compose sequences as follows (note how they closely resemble the LaTeX -- or --- sequences):

Compose, hyphen, hyphen, period: produces – (en dash) Compose, hyphen, hyphen, hyphen: produces — (em dash)

And many other useful sequences too, like Compose, lowercase o, lowercase o to produce the ° (degree) symbol. If you're running Linux, look into your keyboard settings and dig into the advanced settings until you find the Compose key, it's super handy.

P.S. If I was running Windows I would probably never type em dashes. But since the key combination to type them on Linux is so easy to remember, I use em dashes, degree symbols, and other things all the time.

> If I was running Windows I would probably never type em dashes. But since the key combination to type them on Linux is so easy to remember, I use em dashes, degree symbols, and other things all the time.

There are compose key implementations for Windows, too.

I think that's just incorrect. There are varying conventions for spaces vs no spaces around em dashes, but all English manuals of style confine to en dashes just to things like "0–10" and "Louisville–Calgary" — at least to my knowledge.

The Oxford style guide page 18 https://www.ox.ac.uk/public-affairs/style-guide

> m-dash (—)

> Do not use; use an n-dash instead.

> n-dash (–)

> Use in a pair in place of round brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces.

Remember I'm specifically speaking about british english.

HMRC style guide: "Avoid the shorter en dash as they are treated differently by different screen readers" [0].

But I see what you mean. There used to be a distinction between a shorter dash that is used for numerical ranges, or for things named after multiple people, and a longer dash used to connect independent clauses in a sentence [1]. I am shocked to hear that this distinction is being eroded.

[0] https://design.tax.service.gov.uk/hmrc-content-style-guide/

[1] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~tmj32/styleguide/

That guy's style guide seems to conflict with the Cambridge editorial services guidelines - though that is for books rather than papers:

> Spaced en rules (or ‘en dashes’) must be used for parenthetical dashes. Hyphens or em rules (‘em dashes’) will not be accepted for either UK or US style books. En rules (–) are longer than hyphens (-) but shorter than em rules (—).

Section 2.1, "Editorial services style guide for academic books" https://www.cambridge.org/authorhub/resources/publishing-gui...

It's also easy to get them in LaTeX: just type --- and they will appear as an em-dash in your output.

Came here to confirm this. I grew up learning BrE and indeed in BrE, we were taught to use en-dash. I don't think we were ever taught em-dash at all. My first encounter with em-dash was with LaTeX's '---' as an adult.

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