Worst thing ever. A different team took over some web documentation that I'd written, with various examples of Linux command-line use. They somehow round-tripped all the content through Word and all the dashes silently became em-dashes. The fun we had when users had trouble with the examples that they'd copy+pasted from the web pages!
Those things are why I hate this whole culture of creating "user-friendly" software that not only tries to be clever and helpful without first asking what you actually want, but then also actively fights you if you dare to refuse the "help".
Same with those editors that auto-close parentheses and quotes and when it's wrong and I want to delete a redundant quote it also deletes a second one because the developers apparently did not foresee a situation where an odd number of quotes can exist in a file. Not smart enough to do anything right but just smart enough to annoy people. Unpredictable behaviour for key inputs is not user-friendly.
Similar thing happens with our python docstrings, web gui silently converts all double en dash sequences into an em dash. So basically all extended linux keys instead of looking like this (--help) look like this (—help) which is always fun to debug later, if someone has copied example from the help page :)
According to style guides and grammar rules, sure, but if you don’t give your em-dashes room to breathe people might mistake them for a hyphen — true connoisseurs of fine punctuation require one space to announce their dignified entrance, and another to signal a triumphant exit.
I have noticed a strong correlation between obsessing about typesetting - and having nothing interesting to say.
People are more than happy to read text with plain old ASCII dashes instead of em dashes, if the contents are interesting. In my experience, writers who go full Patrick Bateman on fonts and dashes are usually full of hot air
stop spamming the extra spaces—the em-dash does not get spaces around it--and if you are using plain ascii, or a typewriter without a dash key, it's standard to just use two hyphens.
The time I think it's best to use an em-dash is if you have a parenthetical (like this one) but you feel--because it is off the main subject--that it is too strong a thunk in the middle of your sentence, the em-dash streamlines it. Rather than learning to type it in different contexts, I just stick with the double-hyphen approach.
Sometimes I want an em dash in my markdown since it'll get translated to UTF-8 HTML—vim digraphs to the rescue! The visual difference between that and a hyphen in monospace fonts is minimal, which I always thought was a bit of a bummer. (But yeah, what can you do? Put a little "m" over it?)
Pandoc substitutes em dash for "---", which I always liked.
20 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] threadSame with those editors that auto-close parentheses and quotes and when it's wrong and I want to delete a redundant quote it also deletes a second one because the developers apparently did not foresee a situation where an odd number of quotes can exist in a file. Not smart enough to do anything right but just smart enough to annoy people. Unpredictable behaviour for key inputs is not user-friendly.
People are more than happy to read text with plain old ASCII dashes instead of em dashes, if the contents are interesting. In my experience, writers who go full Patrick Bateman on fonts and dashes are usually full of hot air
I think this blog post is an example of negative vibes gathering media attention. It's vapid.
The time I think it's best to use an em-dash is if you have a parenthetical (like this one) but you feel--because it is off the main subject--that it is too strong a thunk in the middle of your sentence, the em-dash streamlines it. Rather than learning to type it in different contexts, I just stick with the double-hyphen approach.
Stream of consciousness or a typo.
Just imagine the wide world of lines people would have to complain about if everything were still manuscripts!
Thank you, Johannes Gutenberg, for saving us all from having to stumble across those rants on HN in 2023.
Pandoc substitutes em dash for "---", which I always liked.