HN

Need help?
<- Back
A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash

A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash

BeetleB

Comments (104)

  • kayo_20211030
    This is super funny, in an ironic sense. The link is broken because the `em-dash` was replaced by a `dash`. The direct link is https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/Dec/a-proclamation-regardi...
  • jonathaneunice
    Cosigned!Em dash forever! Along with en dash for numerical ranges, true ellipsis not that three-period crap, true typographic quotes, and all the trimmings! Good typography whenever and wherever possible!
  • jimnotgym
    This is not the first treatise on this subject to make it to the hn front page.The problem is, I don't recognise it has having ever been a big thing. I tend to read books from the early to mid 20th century. I don't notice lots of dashes. Semi-colons are just as rare. I think both were always niche.
  • thorum
    The problem isn’t the em dashes, it’s the overuse of em dashes. Same for all the other ChatGPT-isms - they’re fine when used occasionally for effect, but there’s no variety. It’s always the same punctuation, same grammatical structures, same rhetorical moves, same paragraph lengths... That’s not what writing is supposed to be like and it becomes very grating after a while.
  • Ericson2314
    I love em dashes — they are just so pretty. But the en dash also needs more love. 1 out of every, say, 7–15 of the hyphens I see should be en dashes instead.
  • MarkusQ
    Argggh! Seeing “tell—tale sign” when it should be “tell-tale sign” is even worse! The point isn't to use punctuation, it's to use punctuation properly!
  • beasthacker
    A weak judgment betrays itself in the indiscriminate use of fine punctuation; for when the em-dash is made universal, it ceases to be distinguished, and becomes merely another form of hyphen.Let the em-dash remain upon the height of style. Let the hyphen toil in the shade of the valley. And let the en-dash—patient, capable, and unjustly overlooked—at last be admitted to polite society, where it may properly mediate matters of form–function.
  • vessenes
    Okay you had me at line—breaks. Rage. Then I saw it was civil disobedience, and I relaxed. Enjoy the em-dash lifestyle; it chose you apparently.
  • mountainriver
    I’ve found myself using the EM dash way more since ChatGPT. I actually really like it as a tool in sentences.Now everyone asks me what AI I’m using
  • sho_hn
    I keep being surprised this is such a big deal on HN, and I have begun to wonder whether this is just a uniquely American conversation.I grew up among European and other international English speakers and writers, and no one blinks an eye at a semicolon or an em-dash. I'm not saying they use them frequently or overuse them, they simply know how to use them correctly and use them well. Writing without either is like ... cooking without garlic. You can, but it certainly makes affairs a lot more boring.Now I understand that America has gone through 1-2 generations of English language teachers drilling their students to simplify, simplify, simplify and emulate the ideal of Hemingway. Is that where this all comes from, do you think?
  • inopinatus
    I have adopted the double-em dash ⸺ to clarify what I’m ―not―.Choose your poison at https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Pd
  • phlakaton
    I'm on vacation so don't have my copy of Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style at hand, but I'm not sure he would subscribe to this manifesto.Now if you were willing to switch to en-dashes, maybe we could overlook the overexuberance. ;-)
  • efitz
    I have been using the em dash in writing forever - in Word, for example, you type a word, then space-hyphen-space, then you type another word and the hyphen is autocorrected to an em dash.I don’t regularly use en-dashes, cause I don’t know how to make them.
  • wavemode
    I've seen far more people complaining about people believing em dashes indicate AI, than people who actually believe that em dashes automatically indicate AI with no other evidence.
  • julbov
    Well the em dash remains difficult to type on a normal keyboard, this is a major reason why I don't use it, and why I think it will never get widespread adoption
  • aniijbod
    "WHEREAS, the Large Language Model has merely mimicked a sophistication it cannot truly possess": says who(m)?
  • sorcercode
    Most AI generated text doesn't seem to have spaces around the em dashes. I've been using that as a subtle distinguishing marker; as both forms are considered grammatically correct.tldr: use spaces around em dashes
  • DonHopkins
    I'm naming my next cat Emdash!
  • renewiltord
    These things are inescapable. In Nov 2019, I helped a friend move. I had a cold and not wanting to get her sick, I wore one of the N95 masks that I had so that I could bicycle in fire season.By 2022, doing the same would be a political statement.
  • drob518
    I’m in. Where do I sign?
  • submeta
    I used em-dashes regularly. However, since they’ve become associated with LLM-generated text, I’ve stopped using them to avoid the appearance of AI assistance.
  • shmerl
    It's easy to use on Linux with Compose key:Compose + --- produces —See all other combos in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/ComposeBut who is using it without it in common scenarios?
  • nikanj
    Can I have the a reverse filter, that replaces smart quotes, em-dashes and other web filth with something a proper compiler rightfully expects? Nothing like copying code samples from someone's blog, and getting weird errors because the helpful blog software made the typography “prettier“
  • pessimizer
    I used to use em-dashes online to seem smart but now that internet addicts are defending them in order to be contrarian about AI slop, I'm abandoning them altogether. I have to finally admit that I actually think they're stupid and I don't want tiny differences in the length of a featureless horizontal line to be grammatically significant.Especially when there's never any context where you can create a minimal pair between two utterances that would give them a different meaning depending on which dash was used. An em-dash is just a stuck up en-dash. I even hate the terms "em-dash" and "en-dash" now, after the typographical snobbery that flooded the culture for about a decade after web fonts got invented and standardized. Frontend developers and web designers started getting big salaries and buying fancy wines and whiskies, so I had to hear the word "Helvetica" 50x a day.
  • gjvc
    in other news, hurrah for the oxford comma
  • ludamn
    [dead]
  • nathias
    LLMs completely ruined "—" for me, its not jus that it makes text look generated I think it revealed something deep about the use of it that was always really cringe and just has no reason to exist...
  • grensley
    I've noticed people using emdashes more in known non-AI text in what I assume is a smokescreen to maintain plausible deniability when they wholesale copy AI text.It's so interesting to me that human writing is subtly changing to mirror AI writing.