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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: 0.001s | source
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Starlevel004 ◴[27 Mar 25 22:09 UTC] No.43498765[source]▶
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.
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theelous3 ◴[27 Mar 25 22:25 UTC] No.43498913[source]▶
Throwing my hat in here. The sub millimeter difference in the length of a dash conveys no additional meaning or clarity. It is impossible to argue me out of this position.

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.

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miltonlost ◴[27 Mar 25 22:37 UTC] No.43499031[source]▶
Length of breath/pause with a longer dash. Read some -- Emily Dickinson poems – you'll find a world ––– of meaning ––– in the millimeter.
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1. handoflixue ◴[28 Mar 25 04:19 UTC] No.43501496{3}[source]▶
Poetry routines breaks grammar rules. A lot of poems rely on very specific white space layouts that you'd never see in writing.

And your example shows how you can just use multiple dashes instead of having three different ones.