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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

What's pretentious about them? They express a distinctive rhythm in written English. What's the the punctuation you would use instead?

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It's like saying I am intimately involved in the printer's art. This is usually not true, unless you're involved with a very niche publisher who still has a box of sorts and inky fingers. Hyphen-minus all the way.

No it doesn't. I happened to have read "design and typography in easy steps" as a (bored) child of the 90s, but that's the extent of my "printer's art" knowledge.

I don't understand the celebration of ignorance myself. There are lots of things I don't know how to do or how to use, but I'd never dream of complaining because somebody else does.

How do you feel about a fleuron dinkus?

It's probably in the book, but I don't remember. This might well be my cue to read it a third time.

Read their original message again--you are debating with a self-proclaimed "fucker." ;)

I wasn't sure what his sex life had to do with typography.

People seem to LOVE parens, although I was taught that they are almost 100% never the correct thing to use in prose. But apparently "some fucker" will accuse me of being pretentious ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Otherwise, I see people just use a regular dash a lot. I love the em dash myself, but of course stopped using it so I won't get accused of AI (which is sad). It's easy to type, at least on a Mac.

Parens and em-dashes do different things. A simple parenthetical is an secondary aside (it's a half step towards a footnote). An interrupting phrase is intended to (abruptly) command attention.

I mean, make the case em-dashes are overused and used lazily, I'm right there with you. I just don't see the pretense.

I understand that, I'm saying that people mis-use them when they mean to use an em-dash. I think I ass-u-me'd a bit too much in my comment.

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