Why Em Dashes Are the Ultimate Tool for Freedom in Writing

One of the more memorable and influential library finds for me was an article in _Advertising Age_ which enumerated all of the special characters which should be set so as to accurately communicate, so in addition to en and em dashes it noted:

- − (minus symbol) for use in math equations or to indicate a negative

- I believe it also noted that there were two forms for the hyphen, normal and discretionary

- × (multiplication symbol) for use in dimensions and when actually indicating multiplication

- ′ and ″ (single and double primes) for use when indicating feet and inches, or minutes and seconds

- it also made explicit the difference between º (ordinal o) and ° (degree symbol) and noted when to make use of the other ordinals

- … while available as a special character, it is often better to construct this using suitably sized non-breaking spaces

- © ® ™ ℠ ℗ (copyright and so forth) to indicate such legal constructs as appropriate

- the various spaces en and em space, non-breaking flex space, &c.

I _think_ I still have a photocopy somewhere, but really should find a copy of the actual magazine....

The far more egregious and reprehensible thing is that many books now are published using quite pedestrian typing of the near equivalents from the keyboard as opposed to actually typing the correct signs.

I wrote a bit on this at:

https://tug.org/texshowcase/onetype.pdf

(note that it intended to be printed, folded, cut in the center, then re-folded so as to make a "hot dog" booklet: h […]

You might think em dashes are amazing—but there is something three times better⸻the "three-em dash" (U+2E3B).

Why this thing exists, I do not know. Unicode people seem to like making bad decisions, like Han unification and emoji sprawl.

Test:

'There is no greater joy in life than typing a sentence, realising it needs a clarification, a caveat, an addendum, but in the same sentence, not a new one, and, guess what, the comma is right there for you. You want to package things neatly together, and the comma lets you do exactly this. Commas make writing feel like you are assembling lego bricks.'

I like using commas for spacing though em dashes do the same thing and avoid the run-on police?

Funny - the ChatGPT app on mac uses a font that doesn't differentiate between any dash.

I use dashes in place of commas, semicolons, colons, and brackets all the time - I just use the standard keyboard dash. Why the heck should I bother learning some stupid key combination to make the dash longer? I highly doubt that the vast majority of readers even know that there are different dashes with different uses. When I learned about it, I decided to be a conscientious objector because using - vs — and assuming I can tell the difference is inane (because it is font based).

(ironically, the HN text editing dialog shows - as ~.8 of the length of — whereas on the site it shows as ~.25 of —)

Em dashes—if properly used—are really useful.

They help convey that I am so smart—and I think so fast—that I have to constantly interrupt myself.

But—and I think this is important—it’s really easy to overuse them.

LLMs abuse em-dashes by putting them in places where a comma would be more appropriate. Especially as the separator before the last item in a list (in place of an "Oxford comma"). Classic LLM-speak em-dash mistreatment is something like, "This design brings performance, power — and speed."

They also like to use em-dashes excessively, especially in bulleted lists, to separate a topic from a comment in each list item.

Avoid those and you're fine. They aren't good writing style anyway. Used well, em-dashes are good!

Troglodyte here... I never use em dashes, never use semicolons, overuse ellipses and commas.

If you are at all interested in punctuation---and especially the em-dash---I highly recommend Nicholson Baker's essay "Survival of the Fittest" in the NYRB:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/11/04/survival-of-the-...

I have always loved---and used---the em-dash, and after reading this essay in The Best American Essays 1994, sometime around 1995, I finally felt justified in my affection.

This post is so self-consciously dependent on inserting em dashes everywhere that it kinda supports its own counterargument. If you're going to make a case for em dashes enabling more fluid writing and more distinctive voice, then you ought to actually use them that way.