literally unusable if you don’t want to be seen as an illiterate chatgpt monger. so depressing. I’m tired of using semi colons and commas in their stead, they’re just too clunky in certain situations. burn the data centers down. fuck and when all actual writers have switched over, like I have (not calling myself a writer fyi), then the ai will just start using those instead. nothing good comes from generative, recreational ai. opium crisis of our times, no use. genuinely, no use. fuck them all. fuck the child herder elon and his (possibly) bastard son peter thiel. karp fuck you too
It’s called an em dash because it’s the length of a typographic em, which was supposedly originally the width of the letter m (hence the name) but is now a bit longer than that. Accordingly, an en dash is half the length of an em dash, and a hyphen is shorter than that still.
— – -
Cool! What’s the reason to use one of the three over another
The prescriptions for when you’re “supposed” to use one or the other are as follows:
There are in fact even more horizontal line symbols with Unicode points than even these six.
But I myself never use en dashes: Ranges in numbers get a ~ like in CJK languages; lists get a hyphen or some other symbol; minuses are also hyphens; phone numbers get hyphens or spaces; and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to write down a metrical foot.
I read all that and understand it, I’m pretty certain.
Still never using anything but a hyphen
Understandable
I actually wanted to say I really like your language posts even if I’m a dullard
I’ve been thinking of doing word of the day posts about my conlang lately, I’ve been writing drafts and all that.
I would read them and upbear them evennif i probably wouldn’t comment
I apparently have always conflated en dashes and hyphens, using what I guess is a minus sign for both: - but that looks like a hyphen to me, so is it not equivalent to the subtraction sign? The layout of my keyboard has it not just next to +/= but also the numpad where a minus should logically go . . .
The - seen on most keyboards corresponds to Unicode 002D and is known as the hyphen-minus. It does the duty of hyphen and minus as it’s name suggests, and dash in some cases.
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The Venn diagram for this is absurd
Welcome to Unicode! Could we interest you in an non-breaking hyphen?
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The Unicode name for that symbol you typed is actually “hyphen-minus”: it’s a character created as a compromise in the early days of fixed-width typewriters, which has persisted into the present day as typewriters evolved into modern computer keyboards. The hyphen-minus is identical to a hyphen, which obviously has a separate Unicode point once again, but the hyphen-minus (as the name implies) does double duty as a minus sign as well. It’s just that there is technically also a different “proper” minus sign that’s a bit wider that you’re “supposed” to use “if you can”… I just don’t see a reason to bother with it.
Wikipedia has a longer article on their usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
But what Erika says is the short version.
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