How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

Re:How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-) by mkehrt on Thursday March 27, 2025 @05:04PM (#43498153)

I always use an em dash when possible when I should, and double en dash when I can't, just because I'm that kind of nerd. But it is the case that a double en dash on iOS autocorrects to an em dash, so I'm suspicious of the claim that em dashes are a tell for LLM writing.

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Re:How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-) by mmooss on Thursday March 27, 2025 @07:16PM (#43499350)

Why not a double hyphen, which has the same result?

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Re:How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-) by lxgr on Thursday March 27, 2025 @08:43PM (#43500031)

Not in all fonts. In most monospace fonts, two hyphens will show with a small gap between them, for example.

I also personally prefer en dashes, surrounded by whitespace on both sides, over em dashes. Apparently some WYSIWYG software interprets two hyphens as an em dash, while other will interpret that as an en dash, so I'd rather just use the real thing if possible to avoid the ambiguity.

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Re:How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-) by nextts on Thursday March 27, 2025 @05:12PM (#43498237)

Most editors should auto changes a double dash into em dash. I thing Google Docs does for example.

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