I didn’t even know an n-dash was a thing. More excitingly, I didn’t know this: “On an iPhone, if you lean gently on the hyphen key, an en dash will present itself to you, as well as an em dash and a bullet (that is: •).” Thanks!
“Hyphens join. En dashes join things that hyphens won’t suffice for. Em dashes separate.” Beautifully succinct. The more deeply one understands a thing, the more simply one can explain it.
FWIW, “Epstein–Barr” is what I learned many years ago as an ESL production editor at Prentice Hall, and I like it—I’m a fan of en dashes, and willing to make a case for them in ambiguous cases—but I can certainly understand your aesthetic objection! You see that en dash and you want “Epstein” or “Barr” to be part of a larger phrase. Makes sense.
I also think that in constructions like Epstein-Barr, an en dash simply wouldn't be buying you anything you really need, and as much as I'm a fan, as you well know by now, of gross excess, I have my limits.
T'other day, at Bluesky, someone was attempting to make the argument to me that the tumultuous saga of Alsace and Lorraine demanded the construction Alsace–Lorraine. When I explained, or attempted to explain, that en dashes do not convey history, he got quite perturbed and blocked me.
How delicious! On seeing the title of your newsletter, I opened this before anything else on my phone this morning. (Another E.M. Forster here, not the British quiz show.
I then proceeded to read it aloud to my husband, laughter punctuating each line. He said he’d never known the difference, wherein I explained to him how to effect them on an iPhone keyboard just before you went into glorious detail about Mac vs. PC. That elicited more laughter!
I love the en dash. Thank you for writing about it—I don't think I've ever been part of an appreciation group for this particular bit of punctuation. The *em* dash, though! It sure has garnered adoration. (I also love the em dash. But it has fans sufficient.)
I teach this stuff for a living—that is, I teach legal writing, so "this stuff" in the broadest sense—and I don't really understand en dashes. My students have been brought up in the Hyphenate Randomly If At All school of thought, and hardly any of them have ever even heard of an em dash. In the necessary triage of topics to cover in a semester, "AI is not an acceptable substitute for actual legal analysis" eclipses pretty much everything in the dash-hyphen family.
Cher–as–Calamity Jane is a show I would pay real money to see. (Typing that, I learned by accident that option+equal sign will give you the "not equal to" sign, which I am very happy to learn.)
I am happy to view George O'Brien in any way the historical record permits and may have viewed him in my mind in ways the historical record does not permit.
If you do a little image-googling of our George you will certainly find that he is presented quite nicely by the historical record in ways that are quite bracing, even if they may not fulfill the entire contents of your imagination.
Thank you for this wonderful deep dive into dashes, Benjamin. I didn’t know about en and em dashes. This is why I’m glad you’re on Substack. Although I was a little disappointed with your example of “sports scores”, I would have preferred “the Mets clobbered the Yankees, 14–2.” 😄
If you have your copy of DE handy, do go look at the footnote on p. 64, which I bet will make you laugh. And the "friend" in question was in fact my editor.
I've enjoyed the discussion of dashes on Bluesky and appreciate this longer piece. You've convinced me of the value of em dashes (even if the article is about en dashes).
Years ago, in the days when laser printers were new and Times New Roman was pretty much the default, I really hated em dashes. The glyph was significantly wider than a capital M, and it seemed out of proportion. (With access to more typefaces, I've notice, the size relative to the M varies.)
Some years later, I read in Robert Binghurst's Elements of Typographic Style, "Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases."* I followed Binghurst's advice for years, not knowing it was the style used in Britain until you mentioned it a few days ago on Bsky.
And now, I'm using em dashes again thanks to your insights.
It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know anything about Binghurst other than his book. In fact, he's Canadian— Which might explain why he prefers the British space-en-space style. (And please note the em-space-capital, which you clarified for me in an earlier comment. 😊)
This comment appeared on a long-ago post on the Subversive Copy Editor blog (Carol Fisher Saller's, of course):
"Of course, the only practical use of the en dash is as subtle code to communicate, from one publishing professional to another, the abstract concept, 'I am copy editor. Hear me roar.' Recognizing the en dash can be like a secret handshake to our club."
I could be accused of being overly enamored of em dashes, but I have been neglectful of en dashes. Now that I know what they are for, I will do my best to add them to my haberdashery.
I fear that I, as well, am an overuser of em dashes--I like the look and I tend to write long sentences--and an unfortunate underuser of the good old semicolon.
A supremely satisfying explanation that I look forward to sharing with my spouse. He is a mechanical engineer by trade, and an editor by passion. The dear man put down his R&D for a few years to edit a technical magazine; those poor scientific authors didn’t know what hit them.
In that phase, I discovered he also cared about using the appropriate dash and was ready to take on corporate titans in the quest for readability. Be still my heart.
As someone who values the implicit aural cues of punctuation—probably from a lifetime of reading scripts aloud—I am interested in your take, if any, on the best way to differentiate a true parenthetical (the one above could go either way, I think) from something–better–set–off with em dashes. And thanks to your notes I now know how to make all those things straight from the keyboard without tricking autocorrect to do them and then backspacing.
I think that that's a very interesting question with, alas, no particularly straightforward (or single) answer. I guess that there's a confiding tone to parentheses that is different from the interrupting quality of dashes? And I have, speaking of scripts, on occasion suggested that the use of parentheses, particularly the excessive use of parentheses, begins to give the impression of a dandy in a Restoration comedy stepping down to the footlights, curling his hand beside his cheek, and saying something saucy.
Ultimately, truly really: Follow your ear. You'll know.
You know, I’m sure all 3,963 of us feel indebted to you for including George O’ Brien in this piece. And, wearing a sweater he must have knitted himself.
It’s this combination of style with written style that is such a delight.
Many library names follow a convention of City-County Public Library (e.g. Toledo-Lucas County Public Library). I continue to use a hyphen because that's the library's official name, but would it more properly be rendered as Toledo–Lucas County Public Library?
In the very particular case of that very particular library, its official name seems to be (at least online) Toledo Lucas County Public Library, which solves that problem, but in similar cases I might say that, believing as I want to that the library would properly use an en dash if it knew how to make one, it wouldn’t be the worst thing on earth to supply the one they didn’t use.
I was directed here at this late date by a comment under your "Are We Dating" essay. I have been as ignorant as anyone about en-dashes (well, I knew what they are and why they are so-called). I learned about dashes in a typing class, where the rule was "a dash is two hyphens".* Period. (Or full stop.) My methods of representing these things in the world of proportional fonts is varied and inconsistent, though in sentence construction I probably could not live without parentheses, dashes, or semicolons. (I'm inconsistent with Oxford commas, as well, but that's another topic, of course.)
*Also two spaces after a sentence; again, another topic.
I didn’t even know an n-dash was a thing. More excitingly, I didn’t know this: “On an iPhone, if you lean gently on the hyphen key, an en dash will present itself to you, as well as an em dash and a bullet (that is: •).” Thanks!
Isn't that fun? It's like finding out where the © is, or the ®, or how to do è and é and ü and ç!
“Hyphens join. En dashes join things that hyphens won’t suffice for. Em dashes separate.” Beautifully succinct. The more deeply one understands a thing, the more simply one can explain it.
FWIW, “Epstein–Barr” is what I learned many years ago as an ESL production editor at Prentice Hall, and I like it—I’m a fan of en dashes, and willing to make a case for them in ambiguous cases—but I can certainly understand your aesthetic objection! You see that en dash and you want “Epstein” or “Barr” to be part of a larger phrase. Makes sense.
I also think that in constructions like Epstein-Barr, an en dash simply wouldn't be buying you anything you really need, and as much as I'm a fan, as you well know by now, of gross excess, I have my limits.
T'other day, at Bluesky, someone was attempting to make the argument to me that the tumultuous saga of Alsace and Lorraine demanded the construction Alsace–Lorraine. When I explained, or attempted to explain, that en dashes do not convey history, he got quite perturbed and blocked me.
Such is life.
Also, what's that thing that Gertrude Stein said about Ezra Pound? A village explainer. Fine if you're a village. If not, not.
I do like to go on, but sometimes, indeed, simplest explanations are best explanations.
(And of course: Thank you.)
How delicious! On seeing the title of your newsletter, I opened this before anything else on my phone this morning. (Another E.M. Forster here, not the British quiz show.
I then proceeded to read it aloud to my husband, laughter punctuating each line. He said he’d never known the difference, wherein I explained to him how to effect them on an iPhone keyboard just before you went into glorious detail about Mac vs. PC. That elicited more laughter!
Thank you for starting my day so marvelously!
❤️
And don't think I didn't notice that artfully wielded "effect."
I love the en dash. Thank you for writing about it—I don't think I've ever been part of an appreciation group for this particular bit of punctuation. The *em* dash, though! It sure has garnered adoration. (I also love the em dash. But it has fans sufficient.)
Indeed, em dashes need no encouragement these days.
I teach this stuff for a living—that is, I teach legal writing, so "this stuff" in the broadest sense—and I don't really understand en dashes. My students have been brought up in the Hyphenate Randomly If At All school of thought, and hardly any of them have ever even heard of an em dash. In the necessary triage of topics to cover in a semester, "AI is not an acceptable substitute for actual legal analysis" eclipses pretty much everything in the dash-hyphen family.
Cher–as–Calamity Jane is a show I would pay real money to see. (Typing that, I learned by accident that option+equal sign will give you the "not equal to" sign, which I am very happy to learn.)
I am happy to view George O'Brien in any way the historical record permits and may have viewed him in my mind in ways the historical record does not permit.
If you do a little image-googling of our George you will certainly find that he is presented quite nicely by the historical record in ways that are quite bracing, even if they may not fulfill the entire contents of your imagination.
Come for the punctuation and copy-editing insights, stay for the shared George O'Brien thirst.
Thank you for this wonderful deep dive into dashes, Benjamin. I didn’t know about en and em dashes. This is why I’m glad you’re on Substack. Although I was a little disappointed with your example of “sports scores”, I would have preferred “the Mets clobbered the Yankees, 14–2.” 😄
If you have your copy of DE handy, do go look at the footnote on p. 64, which I bet will make you laugh. And the "friend" in question was in fact my editor.
❤️
I'll be home tomorrow and will look it up!
I looked up p. 64. That’s hilarious!
Oh yay!
I've enjoyed the discussion of dashes on Bluesky and appreciate this longer piece. You've convinced me of the value of em dashes (even if the article is about en dashes).
Years ago, in the days when laser printers were new and Times New Roman was pretty much the default, I really hated em dashes. The glyph was significantly wider than a capital M, and it seemed out of proportion. (With access to more typefaces, I've notice, the size relative to the M varies.)
Some years later, I read in Robert Binghurst's Elements of Typographic Style, "Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases."* I followed Binghurst's advice for years, not knowing it was the style used in Britain until you mentioned it a few days ago on Bsky.
And now, I'm using em dashes again thanks to your insights.
* Fuller citation here: https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/2009/09/where-to-use-en-and-em-dashes-lupton-vs-bringhurst/
Thank you, Rich, for the kind comments and the additional information.
To be honest, I love the extravagance of Victorian punctuation—!
It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know anything about Binghurst other than his book. In fact, he's Canadian— Which might explain why he prefers the British space-en-space style. (And please note the em-space-capital, which you clarified for me in an earlier comment. 😊)
Gorgeously done.
And yes, I'd imagine that his Canadianness tells us a lot!
Learning, laughing, doing the hokey-pokey….preach, BD ! For real, I didn’t know these distinctions. Thanks!
This comment appeared on a long-ago post on the Subversive Copy Editor blog (Carol Fisher Saller's, of course):
"Of course, the only practical use of the en dash is as subtle code to communicate, from one publishing professional to another, the abstract concept, 'I am copy editor. Hear me roar.' Recognizing the en dash can be like a secret handshake to our club."
I could be accused of being overly enamored of em dashes, but I have been neglectful of en dashes. Now that I know what they are for, I will do my best to add them to my haberdashery.
They're all there to be used (well)!
I fear that I, as well, am an overuser of em dashes--I like the look and I tend to write long sentences--and an unfortunate underuser of the good old semicolon.
A supremely satisfying explanation that I look forward to sharing with my spouse. He is a mechanical engineer by trade, and an editor by passion. The dear man put down his R&D for a few years to edit a technical magazine; those poor scientific authors didn’t know what hit them.
In that phase, I discovered he also cared about using the appropriate dash and was ready to take on corporate titans in the quest for readability. Be still my heart.
Fabulous. Please give him my best regards.
As someone who values the implicit aural cues of punctuation—probably from a lifetime of reading scripts aloud—I am interested in your take, if any, on the best way to differentiate a true parenthetical (the one above could go either way, I think) from something–better–set–off with em dashes. And thanks to your notes I now know how to make all those things straight from the keyboard without tricking autocorrect to do them and then backspacing.
I think that that's a very interesting question with, alas, no particularly straightforward (or single) answer. I guess that there's a confiding tone to parentheses that is different from the interrupting quality of dashes? And I have, speaking of scripts, on occasion suggested that the use of parentheses, particularly the excessive use of parentheses, begins to give the impression of a dandy in a Restoration comedy stepping down to the footlights, curling his hand beside his cheek, and saying something saucy.
Ultimately, truly really: Follow your ear. You'll know.
You know, I’m sure all 3,963 of us feel indebted to you for including George O’ Brien in this piece. And, wearing a sweater he must have knitted himself.
It’s this combination of style with written style that is such a delight.
We're always going to be here for George!
And thank you!
See? This is what I signed up for. Ignore my earlier comment.
Well, okay then!
If you're still answering en dash questions . . .
Many library names follow a convention of City-County Public Library (e.g. Toledo-Lucas County Public Library). I continue to use a hyphen because that's the library's official name, but would it more properly be rendered as Toledo–Lucas County Public Library?
In the very particular case of that very particular library, its official name seems to be (at least online) Toledo Lucas County Public Library, which solves that problem, but in similar cases I might say that, believing as I want to that the library would properly use an en dash if it knew how to make one, it wouldn’t be the worst thing on earth to supply the one they didn’t use.
I was directed here at this late date by a comment under your "Are We Dating" essay. I have been as ignorant as anyone about en-dashes (well, I knew what they are and why they are so-called). I learned about dashes in a typing class, where the rule was "a dash is two hyphens".* Period. (Or full stop.) My methods of representing these things in the world of proportional fonts is varied and inconsistent, though in sentence construction I probably could not live without parentheses, dashes, or semicolons. (I'm inconsistent with Oxford commas, as well, but that's another topic, of course.)
*Also two spaces after a sentence; again, another topic.