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

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650 points Stratoscope | 16 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source | bottom
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mmooss ◴[27 Mar 25 23:41 UTC] No.43499567[source]▶
Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember:

* Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker, cut-and-dried, 212-555-5555.

* EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.)

* EM dashes break things, such as sentences or thoughts: 'What the—!'; A paragraph should express one idea—but rules are made to be broken.

Unicode has the original ASCII hyphen-minus (U+002d), as well as a dedicated hyphen (U+2010), other functional hyphens such as soft and non-breaking hyphens, and a dedicated minus sign (U+2212), and some variations of minus such as subscript, superscript, etc.

There's also the figure dash "‒" (U+2012), essentally a hyphen-minus that's the same width as numbers and used aesthetically for typsetting, afaik. And don't overlook two-em-dashes "⸺" and three-em-dashes "⸻" and horizontal bars "―", the latter used like quotation marks!

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1. energy123 ◴[28 Mar 25 01:28 UTC] No.43500389[source]▶
The em dash is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.
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2. xanderlewis ◴[28 Mar 25 01:31 UTC] No.43500409[source]▶
No, thanks—I’ll keep using them as I always have.
3. alt187 ◴[28 Mar 25 01:48 UTC] No.43500523[source]▶
The letter 'm' is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.
4. sho_hn ◴[28 Mar 25 01:56 UTC] No.43500587[source]▶
My advise is to take pleasure and have confidence in good writing, over misspent energy worrying about things like this.

If you practice your skills, you will reap the rewards.

5. mmooss ◴[28 Mar 25 04:25 UTC] No.43501522[source]▶
Someone else said the same. How can that be when most word processors, and at least some phone keyboards, automatically insert em dashes?
6. phlakaton ◴[28 Mar 25 04:37 UTC] No.43501593[source]▶
Emily Dickinson wept—
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7. mmooss ◴[28 Mar 25 05:16 UTC] No.43501790[source]▶
Ha, good point, and an interesting question: What kinds of dashes did Dickinson intend?

It's a hard one to answer: We could look at published Emily Dickinson books from the time, but did Dickinson really pay that close attention to or have that much control over the type?

We could look at Dickinson's actual personal documents, but if they were handewritten, distinguishing dashes could be difficult even if there was intention there.

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8. grey413 ◴[28 Mar 25 09:22 UTC] No.43503214[source]▶
It's infuriating that people are drawing this conclusion. LLMs pick up on em dash usage because professional and skilled writers use em dashes. They're a consistently useful, if niche, part of the literary toolkit.

But, no, now it's a problem because the majority of people's experience with writing is graded essays. And because LLMs emulate professionals, it's now a red flag if students write too much like professionals. What a joke.

9. grey413 ◴[28 Mar 25 09:26 UTC] No.43503234{3}[source]▶
I imagine it would have been up to the typesetter to make the call. The conventions for dash usage are fairly straightforward. You use em-dashes for asides, en dashes for ranges, and hyphens for most other cases. Its easy to figure out the right character from context (apart from en ranges vs hyphen ranges).
10. armedgorilla ◴[28 Mar 25 11:59 UTC] No.43504268{3}[source]▶
Fortunately we have troves of her handwritten documents; all of her poems were first printed posthumously. To me, she's using the punctuation as pacing or tonal markers as opposed to ligatures ("I'll clutch— and clutch— " vs "I'll clutch-and clutch-"). Many publishers style these marks as longer than normal m-dashes for that reason, which makes sense seeing as they are rarely used as asides.

I interpret her marks—

as breathless pauses—

that— having no unicode—

should be given to m—

and space—

https://www.edickinson.org/editions/2/image_sets/12170035

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11. phlakaton ◴[28 Mar 25 12:26 UTC] No.43504529{4}[source]▶
Em-dashes have been the norm in every Dickinson poem I read, and I think it might have derived from the preferences of Victorian publishers, who I understand loved those long dashes.
12. nkotov ◴[28 Mar 25 14:12 UTC] No.43505661[source]▶
Recently ran into this. Didn't realize it was that obvious.
13. windward ◴[28 Mar 25 15:25 UTC] No.43506613[source]▶
And you'd better not 'delve' into anything
14. mmooss ◴[28 Mar 25 19:01 UTC] No.43508877{4}[source]▶
Great comment. Thank you!
15. lostlogin ◴[28 Mar 25 21:29 UTC] No.43509965[source]▶
I had a quick search, attempting to find a great author who hated em dashes and preferred the vastly superior en dash. I found nothing.

This list of authors punctuation quirks is interesting though.

https://lithub.com/the-punctuation-marks-loved-and-hated-by-...

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16. phlakaton ◴[29 Mar 25 16:27 UTC] No.43516656{3}[source]▶
You want Robert Bringhurst, poet and typographic nerd. He gives them special withering attention in his Elements of Typographic Style. I think he referred to them as Victorian excrescences?