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by frizlab·3y ago·view on hn ↗
An example from the article:

Looks good: “Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.”

Unreadable: “Sometimes writing for money-rather than for art or pleasure-is really quite enjoyable.”

Yes, punctation does matter. (In French the em-dash is almost inexistant; we use parenthesis instead usually.)

13 comments
Just add spaces. Sorted.

“Sometimes writing for money - rather than for art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”

A common substitution for emdash is -- which are two hyphens with spaces around them.

Personally, I think two hyphens also looks better than just one, and it conveys that you really intended it to mean emdash rather than hyphen.

This is similar to how it's typeset in TeX as well: two for en, three for em.
I have used two hyphens, but I appreciated text editors collapsed them into an (em-) dash.

Hyphens are simply for connected-words while dashes are -- for better of worse -- to make asides.

> Personally, I think two hyphens also looks better than just one

It's context-dependent. (Aside: you wouldn't write "context--dependent", which is the use case of the hyphen.)

Ostensibly the en dash is primarily used for ranges, although that's a case where I'm inconsistent. I won't typically write "A - Z" or the technically correct "A–Z", as I think in that case I tend to write "A-Z", using a simple hyphen. I certainly won't write "A -- Z".

The em dash is even wider—it's not typically mistaken for a hyphen.

Sometimes I write A->Z.
Em-dashes add a bit of a pause. And having them longer and taking a bit more of horizontal space makes it more intuitive. They also break a sentence into parts. Having them easily distinguishable helps navigate text and reduces overhead. Just like periods or paragraph breaks help you see parts of a text, or syntax highlighting helps you see lexemes in a program.

Using just one dash for everything will be readable in a text message or comment. But not in a (complicated) book, because there the benefit of these small things gets multiplied by the scale of the book.

> They also break a sentence into parts.

IMHO, this is the main determination on when I decide to use em-dashes: is the text between them an aside of some kind? An alternatives would be to use parentheses.

Personally I do not find that " - " as the GP suggests enough of a visual cue as "—". And on macOS using different dashes is fairly straight-forward:

* hyphen: the key next to zero, "-"

* en-dash: alt/option-"-": –

* em-dash: shift-alt/option-"-": —

Some apps (e.g. Mail) auto-convert double-"-" into an em-dash as well.

Good to see OSX people thought about this.

On Linux, one needs to enable Compose key (keyboard layout settings). After that, you get default sequences like --. and --- for en- and em-dashes.

Since I am now a hyper-hyphen-partisan-pundit after reading that blog post - I'd like to comment on your hyper-hyphenated comment.

> “Sometimes writing for money - rather than for art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”

To me this looks like a cryptic-case of the corrective comma.

“Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.”

Your first sentence should also use a comma rather than the wrong dash.
The way I was taught, you use the comma for a brief aside--em dashes are used for a larger diversion (and parenthesis are for the most tenuous connections.)

In other words a reader should be able to skip reading the contents of parenthesis with negligible impact on the context or meaning of the sentence. They should be able to skip reading the contents of em-dash-seperated text without changing the meaning of the sentence. And text between commas should be considered integral to the sentence, while secondary to the primary gist.

“Sometimes writing for money - I have other aims besides art or pleasure - is really quite enjoyable.”
En space, em space, three-per-em space, four-per-em space, six-per-em space, figure space, punctuation space, thin space, hair space, ideographic space, or Ogham space?
I have written and read text for decades without knowing the difference between those, so whatever space one gets when pressing the spacebar seems to do the job just fine. And if in doubt LaTeX etc will handle the rest well enough if I care about sub-pixel precision of some margins.
This is what I do. I don’t see the problem here. I don’t see the need to adopt additional characters.
It's a tradition from hand-set paper print which is now largely obsolete.
Spaces can cause word wrap that can leave a dash at the end or beginning of a line, which is not beautiful. A spaceless em dash doesn't have the wrapping issues while retaining legibility. You could argue that that's a problem with word wrap algorithms, not punctuation, but that situation is not going to change any time soon.
In German that’s the way it’s done: en-dash with spaces, em-dashes (basically) don’t exist.
I use em dashes with spaces in German (and English) all the time — I just like it better and don't care about arbitrary rules and traditions.
I think that is not really true? There is the "Gedankenstrich" and one can see it in texts. Or do you mean, that it is so rare, that German language almost does not use it? I think that depends on the writer.
Hum, a hyphen is still an entity of its own (it may be even a short, slanted dash in some fonts), then there's the en-dash for association (e.g. "ZDF – Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen"), and there's the "Gedankenstrich", which performs more like a separator. Three typographical entities to express three different concepts. (But there's a tendency of mixing the en-dash with spaces and the "Gedankenstrich", as the latter also comes with surrounding spaces, which may appear overly exaggerated in some fonts.)
However, it is the en-dash, properly, rather than the hyphen. I quite like that punctuation.

Now, anyone typing random texts to a friend or a few need not care, but I think people that write in a professional capacity to more than a few people should know and care.

If you’re going to do that, en dashes look nicer (as explained in the article):

“Sometimes writing for money – rather than for art or pleasure – is really quite enjoyable.”

Is this the yardstick from The Grid? If so, hope all is well :) (and if not, I also hope all is well)
Sorry that’s not me, but thanks for the well wishes and I hope all is well for you too!
Or commas (?). "Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable."
yup
> In French the em-dash is almost inexistant; we use parenthesis instead usually.

The only French-speaking place I've seen em-dashes used in daily life was Québec. For some (good) reason, it seems administration took a lot of care in using correct typography. My voting district for example was Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (the first dash being an en-dash, and the second one a hyphen) and I was always amazed at how all communication actually used these two different dashes.

I can't imagine this level of care in French or Belgian official communication.

(By way of explanation, the parent commenter's voting district covered the Mercier and the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhoods.)
I disagree that the first example looks good. Both cases would be better with spaces, which kind of renders the em dash unnecessary.
Some places I write for use the em-dash with spaces and some without. I try to remember which is which but I often forget.
Looks better: “Sometimes writing for money — rather than for art or pleasure — is really quite enjoyable.”

Punctuation matters, but space -- the "zeroth punctuation mark" -- matters more!

The author does discuss spacing the dashes but is, given the overall point of the article, surprisingly noncommittal.

Others have mentioned using spaces with an en-dash or hyphen instead of an em-dash. Having used a typewriter -back in the day- I learned to produce text like this.

How I learned the Unreadable: “Sometimes writing for money -rather than for art or pleasure- is really quite enjoyable.”

To the teacher I learned from this was a standard way of punctuating on a typewriter.

The "unreadable" sample is very much readable. We can all read it. No one is tripping up trying to figure out what a "money-rather" is.
Not for me. It's readable, but my brain has to do more work. When I get to "money-rather" my brain trips up slightly, and then I'm confused until the next dash, then I go back and figure it out.

All possible and dealt with in under a second, but in the first example with the longer dash my brain recognises a parenthesis and I take a little "breath pause" before carrying on.

Also consider, that eye movement is not always linear from left to right. But I agree, brain has to do more work and it is slightly confusing.
I can read it, but it definitely trips me up.
It‘s not unreadable, just a tad more difficult. And as others have pointed out, there are other ways of making it easier again than using a specific character. But the real point is: The information transported in both examples did not change its meaning and will be understood by the reader / receiver in both cases. If it‘s not, it matters. As long as it is, it‘s pedantic.
Wouldn't the alternative rather be to use commas there, not a hyphen?

"Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable."

In your head, do you read those differently?

Personally, I think this sentence would benefit from a comma before the ‘or’. And in that case we could probably benefit from a clearer way of setting aside the parenthetical.

“Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.”

– this seems awkward to me. This version, though:

“Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art, or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.”

Isn’t that more fluid?

> “Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.”

I think that changes the meaning, since it’s now a list of 3 items with an Oxford comma, rather than two lists, with the first list having 1 item, and the second list having 2 items. And I’m having a rough time even making sense of such revised meaning.

Expressed as pseudo-code, I read the original intent of that sentence as:

“money and not(art or pleasure) == enjoyable”

and that can be broken into

“((money and not art) or (money and not pleasure)) == enjoyable

Also in Portugal, just use parenthesis (like when you would insert an idea into a sentence) and it still reads fine.
> In French the em-dash is almost inexistant; we use parenthesis instead usually.

French uses em-dashes ("tiret cadratin") or en-dashes ("tiret semi-cadratin") for dialogue. Like so:

– bonjour, dit-elle, comment allez vous?

– bonsoir, repondit-on. Ça va ça vient, et vous?

– bien

I use em-dashes and parentheses somewhat differently but you can mostly substitute the latter for the former.
Right, the dash length seems more of an aesthetic choice, like a drop cap or something.
I just use commas or parens.
Having multiple options for how to offset parenthetical asides, far from being redundant (or even confusing), offers us—as writers and readers—more opportunities to express the tonal variations (or nuances) that we would – in spoken language – communicate through our voice and body language; moreover it lets us vary the visual, aesthetic quality of our prose – which is as much a part of the experience of reading as comprehension is.
Is this a written excerpt from a text book or something? This single sentence makes more sense than many of the arguments I've seen previously.