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How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

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650 points Stratoscope | 2 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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sandbach ◴[27 Mar 25 21:05 UTC] No.43498175[source]▶
Robert Bringhurst¹ prefers the en dash in the context of setting off phrases:

"The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.

"Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side."

¹https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780881791327/page/80/mode/...

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1. fsckboy ◴[28 Mar 25 00:20 UTC] No.43499861[source]▶
"Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side."

"Used as a phrase marker—thus—the em dash is set without normal word spaces."

>the em dash is too long for use

above, the em-dash without spaces is smaller, at least in this typeface

I've taken to using dash offsets—just as an aside—in many places were I formerly used parentheses; I find it "less interrupts" the flow of the sentence.

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2. CRConrad ◴[08 Apr 25 23:56 UTC] No.43627613[source]▶
Nope. Without the spaces, the dash doesn't set anything aside, it glues together. And with them, the m is of course longer than the n.