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

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650 points Stratoscope | 3 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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MindBeams ◴[28 Mar 25 12:00 UTC] No.43504280[source]▶
This sort of anti-intellectualism is the perfect antidote for those who claim that improper grammar is nothing more than evidence of language "evolving."
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1. Aardwolf ◴[28 Mar 25 14:39 UTC] No.43506004{3}[source]▶
I think many grammar rules are not intellectual but just randomly evolved conventions.

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)

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2. NegativeLatency ◴[28 Mar 25 18:57 UTC] No.43508838[source]▶
Spelling used to be more fluid and up to the writer/printer. Printers would also use different spellings as a mechanism to change the line width and otherwise format text to their liking.

https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html

3. milesrout ◴[28 Mar 25 20:33 UTC] No.43509577[source]▶
That "rule" is the rule in America but not elsewhere. Please break it. It is stupid.