I refuse to care about this. A single dash is all I will ever use. I see no possible reason to use the other two.
replies(13):
It's not like you can reliably write these consistently by hand either without going over the top in length to make it extremely obvious.
i really like using em dashes -- for some reason, it feels "better" in my head than using something like a comma or a semi-colon.
-proud dash luddite
-5--2°C
post-war-pre-digital era
See sections 10-O-15-Q
Try Our New York-London Flight Connection!
There are cases when you want to follow certain guidelines, for sure. If you write for a publication that adheres to Meriam-Webster, you'd better stay consistent and figure out the right AltGr code to type the right dashes. However, for the 99.99% of written media today, none of that matters.
Suit yourself, but if you refuse to learn basic grammar you will be treated like you are stupid and uneducated. Like it or not, presentation matters. Getting the basics right, including things like spelling, grammar, etc, shows a basic attention to detail without which your services will likely do more harm than good.
Getting "much" and "many" right is completely different. They mean different things. Confusing them makes you sound stupid. Less vs fewer is the same. It often doesn't matter but in some cases it really grates on the ears (eg "there wasnt much people there" just sounds awful).
Dashes are not in the same category. They are orthographical conventions. They aren't really grammar. They are more like spelling. You can spell things wrong and say it doesn't matter because spelling is arbitrary and you can use the wrong dashes too, but it makes you look either uncaring or ignorant. If you want to give a good first impression, learn the basic conventions of written English and follow them.
post-war - pre-digital era (not a sentence any sane person would use anyway).
See sections 10-O - 15-Q
Try our New York-London flight connection! (no kind of dash clears this one up without fixing capitalisation).
Try Our New York–London Flight Connection.
Or if it was New York:
Try Our New York – London Flight Connection.
Note the additional spaces. Agree on the capitalization though.
And your example shows how you can just use multiple dashes instead of having three different ones.
I'd wager serious money that if you put that on a sign and surveyed people, at least in the US, they'd all still conclude it is a "New York" to "London" flight.
What's the use of a communication tool, if it doesn't actually communicate anything to real people?
actually it's "etc."
(I wouldn't usually be a pedant, but if you think the difference between "--" and "—" matters, you should probably try to get the basics right too.)
However, em dashes are a different case. The main reason why it's desirable to use em dashes (beside convention) is for clarity of purpose. The hyphen is already a very overloaded character; they're extensively used to denote ranges and link compound words. Importantly, both of those usages do not correspond to pauses in spoken language. If you're voicing a hyphen you're supposed to barrel on through it. An em dash is much closer to a parenthesis, comma, or semicolon. It's a meaningful break in the sentence, in the way that a hyphen isn't.
Now, if it were up to me I'd choose a different character to replace em dashes (maybe underscores), but that's a separate argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Approximating_the_em_dash...
This is also true of "less" and "fewer". I use "less" everywhere.
E.g. some English language rule says that a comma or ending period of a non-quoted sentence goes inside the quotes if there's something quoted at the end of that sentence. That rule feels anti-intellectual to me, as if there's some misunderstanding of how hierarchical placement in one-dimensional space works (since something that's not being quoted is being put inside quotes)
Rather, seeing too short of a dash is like putting two clashing colors together or wearing two pieces of clothes that don’t match. It just looks instantly off.
It’s just not aesthetically pleasing for me.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/etc even redirects to the correct URL with a "."
> Dashes are used inside parentheses, and vice versa, to indicate parenthetical material within parenthetical material. ...
> The bakery’s reputation for scrumptious goods (ambrosial, even—each item was surely fit for gods) spread far and wide.
I agree with you completely.
I wish it was more popular, it neatly indicates meaning so very well.
This is all stuff you learn in school. Punctuation isn't obscure or niche. You may not have learnt about semicolons or em dashes in school but you should have and I did. As did anyone that has ever read a novel. There are two semicolons on the first page of the first Harry Potter book, a novel read by approximately every child of my generation. There are loads of examples of the proper use of dashes and other "obscure" punctuation marks in any professionally typeset text.
-5—2
That looks like dogshit.
It's a mistake in the first place to decide to use only dashes and no spaces to convey all of this lol
-5 - 2 (Everyone knows a sign has no space - if you are building your sign for idiots try some of these:)
-5 > 2 -5->2 -5 <-> 2 -5 to 2 -5...2 Between -5 and 2
blah blah blah