There's such a thing as an en-dash too: http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/en-dash.html

I don't know enough about punctuation to know whether he actually meant "em" when he wrote "en" in several places, but I'm going to assume he actually meant to refer to em-dashes some places, and en-dashes others.

"you misspelled ..." is often a way to be funny. I suspect colanderman was making a point about em dashes being mo' better than en dashes.

No, the GP literally mistyped (or had autocorrected) "em" as "en" in a couple locations. Fixed now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16089209).

> I agree with you but I think you have mistyped "em" as "en" is several places.

Er, yeah.

That was just ugly.

I fixed (hopefully all of) those.

I noticed few others seemed to favor it as much, but never wondered why. My friend hates the em dash, and I suppose I partly agree. She said she dislikes when people use it as commas – but parenthesis are fine – which is pretty fair.

See what happens when people use en dashes when they mean to use em dashes? Total chaos!