alt Hacker NewsLooks and readability matter in writing. I always uses spaces on either side of the em-dash; looks too crowded otherwise to my eye.
I've been doing doing it that way for so long I still often use the "--" construct from way back in ascii email days.
At least I've gotten past the two-spaces after a period I learned from the typewriter. Most of the time, anyway.
Replies
tshaddox • yesterday at 4:24 PM
To me it doesn't affect readability either way, but to my American English eye the surrounding spaces stands out as extremely non-standard.
In LaTeX:
- A single hyphen designates ... a hyphen.
- A doubled hyphen designates an en dash.
- A tripled hyphen designates an em dash.
<https://ladedu.com/how-to-use-en-dash-and-em-dash-in-latex/>
(I'm not aware of longer dashes native to LaTeX, though I believe doubled en or em dashes are occasionally used.)
Many Markdown flavours incorporate this, such that en / em dash usage in Markdown-authored docs should not be entirely unexpected. I believe many LLMs output Markdown which is subsequently rendered, based on watching intermediate outputs and saved sessions. I tend to adopt LaTeX / Markdown semantics elsewhere.