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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2879 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026

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I never use AI to compose or "polish" text, and I really resent that accusation being lobbed at me. Once the difference between hyphens and em-dashes was pointed out to me, it became impossible to unsee, and I make a point of using em-dashes whenever they're appropriate. I even asked on this very forum how to type them on a standard keyboard, if you don't believe me.

Apologies, then; the emdash in general is something that I only ever see in AI-derived stuff, plus the actual dash is just right there on the keyboard, plus I do not trust non-basic ASCII to not get mangled when I copy it back and forth. You clearly (again) had enough insight that the ideas were human-derived (and I did actually go to Free ChatGPT and had a kind of uncanny-valley conversation with it to reinforce my intuition that AI was not good at discussing the ideas in Blindsight), and it seemed relevant to a discussion on non-conscious intelligences and what they can and can't do.

I make a point of using em-dashes whenever they're appropriate

But you're using them wrong.

  • Good: "author—well" (em dash with no spaces)

  • Okay (preferred by some publishers, though I personally see no need for it): "author – well" (en dash with spaces)

  • WTF: "author — well" (em dash with spaces)

em dash with no spaces is the traditional US standard for serious typography, now adopted by LLMs. en dash with spaces is the British standard. A dash which separates two thoughts and a parenthetic dash are set in the same way.

An en dash without spaces is used for ranges and sports scores in both the UK and the US, e.g. 3-6 months or a 2-0 defeat.

ASCII does not distinguish between hyphens, dashes, and minus signs, meaning that a hyphen with spaces became the online standard for dashes in the era when plain ASCII was what the internet ran on - hence the em dash becoming an LLM marker

LaTeX sets hyphens, en dashes, em dashes, minus sings representing negation, and minus signs representing subtraction as five different characters.

LaTeX sets hyphens, en dashes, em dashes, minus sings representing negation, and minus signs representing subtraction as five different characters.

Does it use different characters for negation vs subtraction? I thought it was the same character but with different kerning.

em dash with no spaces is the traditional US standard for serious typography, now adopted by LLMs. en dash with spaces is the British standard.

This is a gross overgeneralization, judging from a few books grabbed from my shelves and websites visited.

  • Steve Jackson Games (Austin, 1970s–present): En dash with spaces

  • New York Times (present): Em dash with spaces (cringe)

  • Sherlock Holmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993): Em dash without spaces

  • Rumpole of the Bailey (London: Penguin, 1983): En dash with spaces

  • Reuters (London, present): Hyphen-minus with spaces (cringe)

  • Associated Press (New York, present): Em dash with spaces (cringe)

Every publisher does whatever it wants.

a hyphen with spaces became the online standard for dashes in the era when plain ASCII was what the internet ran on

You're forgetting about the double hyphen-minus.

Okay, what would be the correct unit of punctuation to separate two clauses with a space on either side?

I just gave you two options—either an em dash with no spaces (as I prefer), or an en dash with spaces (as, e. g., Steve Jackson Games prefers). Just don't use an em dash with spaces.

Even Merriam-Webster acknowledges that usage varies:

Spacing around an em dash varies. Most newspapers insert a space before and after the dash, and many popular magazines do the same, but most books and journals omit spacing, closing whatever comes before and after the em dash right up next to it.

I suspect this may be yet another "separated by a common language" thing, where spaces on either side is the norm in the UK and Ireland.

But what is the point of adding all these extra spaces? Isn't an em dash long enough without them?

It's like how the French language adds a random space before a colon, a question mark, or an exclamation mark, but not before a period. I just don't see any reason for it.

(Coincidentally, @ZorbaTHut is currently insisting that adding random vertical spaces to the rules page is a good thing.)

To me, no spaces makes it look like the words on either side of the em-dash have been hyphenated. To return to your previous example, when I first read your comment there was a split-second when I was thinking "what on earth is an 'author-well'?" and wondered if it might be an inkwell than an author dips his quill into.

In my browser, a hyphen-minus is 5 pixels, an en dash is 9 pixels, and an em dash is 16 pixels. (These measurements were gathered, not manually, but by using the browser's "inspect element" feature on a span element that includes only the character in question.) Being unable to tell the difference between a hyphen-minus and an em dash sounds like a severe skill issue.


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Well, point taken.

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