No it isn't--double-hypens are a great alternative to an em dash and are interpreted as such by many people and some software. GP's argument is for the grammatical functionality of differentiating dashes, not the specific symbols used.

That said, I don't use en dashes, if I want my numbers to line up I use a fixed-width font.

That’s a reason not to use figure dashes, which aren’t the same thing as en-dashes.

I find it unlikely that the comment was typed on a typewriter, or sent over a teletype. Computers and phones make it easy to type em-dashes if you want to do that. No sub-par alternatives are needed.

> No it isn't; double-hypens are a great alternative to an em dash and are interpreted as such by many people and some software. GP's argument is for the grammatical functionality of differentiating dashes, not the specific symbols used.

Use ;

Works just fine

> Use ;

Comma, not semicolon, is the usual alternative to em-dashes for setting off asides, semicolons set off independent clauses.

Semicolons are often better just replaced by periods. I sometimes use them but I've had at least one editor who refused to use them for news-oriented copy.

Not sure if a deliberate joke but those are two independent clauses so should've used a semicolon :-) (between "asides" and "semicolons")

Did you know double dash is treated as one single longer than normal dash by default in iOS?

This character ‘—‘ looks like one long dash to me, even though I typed the dash button twice. What’s even crazier is if I type four dashes ‘——‘ it still looks like one even longer dash; even six ‘———‘ is a solid line, and I can delete it by pressing the backspace button once

I have no idea how to get my phone to display two short dashes side by side: ‘--‘ maybe I can fake it by puttin an emoji in between, knowing that hackernews will filter it out. Let’s see what happens.

Edit - ooh that totally works. I’d never really paid attention to how this feature worked before.

I did, hence my other comment in this thread — proper dashes are easy.

“--” can also be input on iOS by entering “- -” and then deleting the space. Or you can disable the “Smart punctuation” setting and type what you actually mean.