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

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650 points Stratoscope | 1 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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a3w ◴[27 Mar 25 20:49 UTC] No.43498011[source]▶
> spans pages 128–34.

Who omits the 1 from the second number?! That is aweful!

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crazygringo ◴[27 Mar 25 21:40 UTC] No.43498497[source]▶
Who keeps the 1?

You write pages 1,003–4, instead of typing out 1,003–1,004 which is just unnecessary.

Works the same with two digits, or even three: pp. 1,899–902.

This is standard practice and arguably clearer.

I've only ever seen it done with page ranges, though. I'm not sure if it's done with year ranges? E.g. 1984–5? Or 1989–92? You work with page ranges constantly in academia, I just don't see year ranges much in any form.

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lucgommans ◴[28 Mar 25 00:10 UTC] No.43499780[source]▶
Literally never seen this (wish I could grep all comments I've ever replied to) and I do not understand what makes you say that it's clearer when it's dropping information, making it relative rather than a fully qualified number

In speech, it's common, and misunderstandings are usually not a problem (if you're not monologuing on a recording) because someone will just ask; but in writing it looks like the range is the wrong way around. Maybe I expect more care in writing because the feedback loop is longer, or maybe it's just habit and I think it's wrong in writing because I never see it?

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1. LegionMammal978 ◴[28 Mar 25 01:36 UTC] No.43500449[source]▶
MLA-style citations call for abbreviating page ranges in that way. I mostly see it in literary papers, and not many other contexts, so it would be easy to notice them rarely if at all. Outside of that context, I occasionally see it used for year ranges.