Benjamin Dreyer: Hyphens join, en dashes join things that hyphens won't suffice for, and em dashes separate. The rest is commentary. #copyediting

Hyphens join, en dashes join things that hyphens won't suffice for, and em dashes separate. The rest is commentary. #copyediting

#copyediting en dash alert

Brits tend not to recognize the US use of en dashes in part because they use en dashes, with space on either side, where we use em dashes. Also, copy editors are the only people who know how en dashes work, and they're the only people who have to know how they work.

And this also reminds me that though "in the weeds" is now commonly used to mean "in intense micro detail," and not necessarily in a negative way, I learned it as a waiter to mean "I've got too many tables all of whom want to order in the next 45 seconds and I'm dying here."

*where we use em dashes without space, that is

Alas, I have worked on projects where the author used spaces around em dashes and it was annoying to fix for 40 chapters.

Find and replace is your friend.

As it should be. Em dashes with a space are an abomination. One of the very few (possibly the only) matters of style about which I feel strongly enough to lapse into absolutism.

Is this why I have no memory or learning about them in school, despite having had good English teachers, including one who made diagramming sentences fun?

In a word: Yup.

Oh thank god, I’ve just smiled and nodded through discussion of them, trying to look like of course I understand, while wondering if I fell into some kind of time slip alternate universe through an apartment at the Dakota.

They are totally not a layperson's thing, and you absolutely were not taught them. I promise.

I had a boss who knew one (1) Punctuation Fact, it was en dash use, it was very important to his identity as a writer, and now I know en dash use.

That's wild!

The glee with which he would identify dashes of situationally improper length in my writing was palpable.

My software routinely converts the first one into an em dash and leaves the second one alone. I have long given up trying to fix it.

Thank you for taking the time to teach the rest of us!

That's m'job! Thank *you.*

Since you said this and you are an expert, this gives me the opportunity to ask. Is *you.* correct and/or better than *you*. ? Or are they equivalent? Is the bolding indicated by the asterisks the same rule as quotation marks? I've been wanting to ask this, because I'm pedantic that way.

I have pondered this long and hard and have settled on: *you.* Because *you*. is going to remind me of Brit punctuation, and that simply will not do.

Now I’m even happier that this is also what I have settled on.

Thank you. That is exactly why I asked the expert. Your answer makes perfect sense. I reference DE at least once a week, by the way. Hardcover, of course. 😇

I've become used to the British space en-dash, but what drives me mad is colleagues putting spaces around slashes (/) for some reason. Maybe that's correct, too, and it's hardly formal usage, but still...

You just want to make sure that your slashes aren't crashing into the things on either side (which is a problem in some typefaces with, say, apostrophes following something in italics), but I can't see any reason to add spaces around slashes. At all.

I actually do it a lot on social media, because it seems easier to read at a glance. I wouldn’t put it into print, though.

Fair.

I’m betting that it’s because the slashes get picked up by websites that try to convert them into hyperlinks or otherwise do some sort of formatting that messes up the original intent.

Most of the material I copyedit has lots of hyphenated species, lots of date ranges, and sporadic use of em dashes and en dashes in other situations. I learned it pretty fast in that environment (and still have to look up rules on a regular basis). “Replace all” is not my friend, either.

One of my reporters (hello, @knottkatherine.bsky.social) listened to me and learned how to use en dashes and I nearly cried the first time I saw "2023–24."

Ah but a good en-dash is so typologically pleasing!

Deeply relieved by that final clause, largely because I use en dashes the UK way, so the only way I know how to make them (in Word) is to put a space on either side of a hyphen and let the computer do magic.

Oh, commentary, then: The standard em dashes that go with a particular typeface are often, to copyeditorial eyes, too short, and we were often asking our designers to lengthen them.

And in these typefaces the en dashes tend to look like hyphens and the hyphens tend to look like stray specks.

Until your posts, I did not know that there was a difference between hyphens and en dashes, and because this is America in 2024, I feel I can still refuse to acknowledge it on the ground(s?) that I hate objective reality.

I finally learned what en-dashes truly are a year or two ago. The Mets lost 9–0, the war lasted from 1756–1763. Still looks a little off to me.

*The war lasted from 1756 to 1763. You have a from, you need a to.

True. “The SYW (1756–1763).” I used to use a hyphen. It’s like I used to be a binary thinker and now I have to be a trinary one.

There ya go. Good use.

Still looks wrong in some fonts.

Honestly, "the Mets lost" looks pretty familiar.

This is my Achilles’ heel and one of the top reasons why I love copyeditors. I put one of those horizontal doohickeys in my text and send it off with a childlike faith that someone on the other end knows how long or short it’s supposed to be. I’m not proud of it, but at this point it is what it is.

A friend in my world says that en dashes are the proper separator in numerical dates when you don't use virgules. So 6–16–24 instead of 6-16-24. When he sees this construction in resumes, he checks to see what kind of dashes. We're tech writers, so that kind of precision and detail is important.

I see absolutely no lack of clarity in the use of hyphens in that construction and nothing at all to be gained by the use of en dashes.

Would it be sacrilege to suggest that the overwhelming majority of people see no difference in endashes, endashes and hyphens and manage just fine?

Would it be sacrilege to suggest that the overwhelming majority of people don't notice a couple of hundred things that go on on the printed page that nonetheless make the contents of those printed pages more readable and appealing?

Fair enough.

Tell me about it.....

I don't disagree. I use hyphens all the time in casual writing. But all sorts of style guides recommend en dashes for this (as well as number and date ranges). I'm thinking I care when the audience is curmudgeonly, persnickety, or pedantic, or I'm writing technical content, otherwise, no.

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