[HN Gopher] A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash
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A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash
Author : BeetleB
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-12-26 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.nawaz.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.nawaz.org)
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| 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...
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| ... and the content is genuinely funny too.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Ouch. I'll restore the original link as I can't change the
| submission.
|
| Restored.
| shmerl wrote:
| 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/Compose
|
| But who is using it without it in common scenarios?
| BeetleB wrote:
| In principle, an em dash is supposed to be used where most
| people use hyphens. That's why Word/LaTeX make it easy to use:
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...
| shmerl wrote:
| Yeah, for sure, but without easy way to access it from the
| keyboard, most don't bother wasting time inserting it.
|
| Smart tools like LibreOffice and above indeed help with it,
| but in other scenarios, especially common browser usage
| that's not the case. Compose key is really useful for that,
| but it's not widely known outside of Linux.
| macintux wrote:
| MacOS makes it simple: option + - for en-dash, option +
| shift + - for em-dash.
| shmerl wrote:
| I see. What other combos does it support?
| macintux wrote:
| Option is used extensively for non-Ascii characters, a
| comprehensive list would be quite long.
|
| A few of the easier to remember:
|
| option + 0 for degrees o
|
| option + u for to place an umlaut over the next typed
| character (when it's a valid combination, anyway) eua
|
| option + c for cedilla c
| shmerl wrote:
| Interesting. Kind of reinventing Compose key combos. I
| wonder why they didn't just reuse Compose ones from
| FreeBSD.
| macintux wrote:
| This dates back to the beginning of the Mac, so it's
| almost 10 years older than FreeBSD. (I'm unfamiliar with
| other UNIX compose key tooling that may have predated
| it.)
| layer8 wrote:
| There are lots: https://mackeeper.com/blog/special-
| characters-mac-keyboard/#...
| shmerl wrote:
| Yeah, looks like they developed separately from Compose
| combos.
| michael_michael wrote:
| I use u for microns or micrometers um. Option + m.
|
| Also if you need ad-hoc bullets, just reach for option +
| 8.
|
| * Like this.
|
| The difficulty in accessing symbols like these is one of
| my (I'm sure correctable) hang-ups when using Linux --
| Arch, btw.
| layer8 wrote:
| On macOS and Windows there are keyboard shortcuts for en/em
| dashes, but I also prefer the Compose key.
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I tend to read books from the early to mid 20th century. I
| don't notice lots of dashes.
|
| They are more prevalent in nonfiction.
| macintux wrote:
| I use semi-colons frequently, probably at least a half dozen
| times/week.
|
| Em-dashes not so much, but I'm so deathly sick of people
| complaining that some piece of text must be LLM-generated that
| I feel the need to start using it as well.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'm the opposite. I use hyphens/dashes all the time, and
| almost never a semicolon. My English professor complained
| about my overuse.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I feel like programmers use semi-colons more often; we're
| more familiar with them.
| macintux wrote:
| Erlang (and probably Prolog, but my memories there are
| fuzzy) use periods, commas, and semi-colons in a directly
| analogous way to English.
| amitav1 wrote:
| I wonder if there are languages of programming that use
| em-dashes?
| macintux wrote:
| APL seemed the likeliest candidate, but no such luck.
| dxdm wrote:
| > The problem is, I don't recognise it has ever been a big
| thing.
|
| This is not a problem. Or rather, it is not a problem in the
| way that I think you mean.
|
| Em dashes do not need to be a big thing to be useful, which
| they are; they also do not need anyone's personal recognition
| to do their jobs.
|
| The problem may, in fact, be that they used to be more of a
| niche punctuation mark that people were not very familiar with.
| Now that LLMs have fallen in love with them and throw them
| around like candy, if people have hardly ever seen them used in
| well-written text before, they might treat them alone as a much
| stronger signal for LLM generation than they should -- which is
| precisely what is bringing em-dashes under fire these days, and
| hence results TFA.
|
| So, yes, indeed, in some ways the problem is, that you don't
| recognise it has ever been a big thing.
| johngossman wrote:
| It depends on who and what you read. Since they became
| controversial, I notice them more. Charles Dickens used them
| both regularly--most pages seem to have both.
|
| Virginia Woolf's writing has the most semi-colons I've seen and
| almost as many em-dashes. It fits her stream of consciousness
| style where there are very few hard stops.
|
| Jack Vance used semi-colons in almost the opposite fashion to
| increase the tempo by having short clauses without using
| conjunctions. His action scenes are sometimes almost staccato.
|
| Just today I'm reading Patricia McKillip and noticed she also
| used a lot of em-dashes.
| jonathaneunice wrote:
| 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!
| ademarre wrote:
| I am all for using proper typographic symbols, but it is
| unclear what place the precomposed ellipsis U+2026--what I
| assume you mean by "true ellipsis"--has in that canon,
| especially with the compressed form it takes in most fonts.
| infogulch wrote:
| I agree we all ought to use available punctuation marks
| correctly. That said, I am compelled to lodge a formal
| complaint against quoted text arbitrarily assimilating
| punctuation from its surrounding context.
|
| Quoted text is a sacred verbatim reproduction of its original
| source. Good authors are very careful to insert [brackets]
| around words inserted to clarify or add context, and they never
| miss an oppurtunity (sic) to preserve the source's spelling or
| grammatical mistakes. And yet quoted text can just suck in a
| period, comma, or question mark from its quoted context, simply
| handing the quoting author the key to completely overturn the
| meaning of a sentence?! Nonsense! Whatever is between the
| quotes had better be an exact reproduction, save aforementioned
| exceptions and their _explicit annotations_. And dash that
| pathetic "bUt mUH aEstHeTIcS!" argument on the rocks!
|
| "But it's ugly!", says you.
|
| "Your shallow subjective opinion of the visual appearance of
| so-called ugly punctuation sequences is irrelevant in the face
| of the immense opportunity for misbehavior this piffling
| preference provides perfidious publications.", says I.
| LanceH wrote:
| And two spaces after a period! Who's with me?
| jcheng wrote:
| And text figures! And proper small caps!!
| efitz wrote:
| 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.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Word's autocorrect inserts en-dashes.
| xeonmc wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Word's autocorrect for space dash space is
| endash not emdash, no?
| markalby wrote:
| it's usually space dash dash space across most word processors.
|
| I picked up the habit a couple years ago of just undoing the
| autocorrect to an em dash and leaving it as two dashes to avoid
| accusations -- now it's stuck with me
| drob518 wrote:
| I'm in. Where do I sign?
| layer8 wrote:
| You sign like this:
|
| -- drob518
| drob518 wrote:
| I actually do sign my emails with an em-dash like that.
| inopinatus wrote:
| Showing advanced years perhaps but I sign mine with a line
| consisting solely of 2x ASCII hyphen-minus and a space.
| -- inopinatus
| MarkusQ wrote:
| 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!
| EGreg wrote:
| I totally agree!
|
| When I was growing up, I saw plays also use it like this:
| The two are in a room. -- Some guy says this -- The
| other guy says that
|
| You just don't see em-dashes used like they used to -- and it
| shows!
| schoen wrote:
| This use in dialogue is common in Continental European
| languages, especially Romance languages. I think it's also
| common in English among writers who were influenced by other
| European languages?
| messe wrote:
| IIRC Joyce was a fan.
| blauditore wrote:
| Which languages are you talking about? It looks unfamiliar
| to me.
| schoen wrote:
| Here's someone talking about an example in French:
| https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/fr-em-dash-
| usage.364...
|
| I believe I've also seen it in Spanish and Portuguese.
| rafabulsing wrote:
| Brazilian here. That is indeed the standard way dialogue
| is represented in literature. We call the em-dash a
| "travessao".
| pbalau wrote:
| I think Romanian uses that too and it just occurred to me
| that "linie de dialog" is not dash, but em dash.
| jonah wrote:
| They used two hyphens -- instead because typewriters don't
| have em dashes --.
| EGreg wrote:
| Sure, but that's not what I was talking about :)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That's an intentional overcorrection for humor
| pbalau wrote:
| Here's another one: "I can't be bothered to use em-dash?"
| blauditore wrote:
| Have you ever noticed some people can't even use basic
| punctuation like question marks.
| amitav1 wrote:
| No, I haven"t?
| BeetleB wrote:
| "In protest, I wrote [1] a plugin to convert all hyphens in
| this blog to em--dashes. _Even ones that really should just be
| hyphens._ "
| mjd wrote:
| I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to
| your newsletter.
|
| Related and perhaps interesting:
| https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/114730157688607856
| inopinatus wrote:
| Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish,
| interline; Be mindful, when Invention fails; To
| scratch your Head, and bite your Nails. Your poem
| finish'd, next your Care Is needful, to transcribe it
| fair. In modern Wit all printed Trash, is Set
| off with num'rous Breaks[?]and Dashes--
|
| -- Swift, Jonathan (1733). _On Poetry; a rapsody_
| mountainriver wrote:
| 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
| Valodim wrote:
| Is it worth it?
| sho_hn wrote:
| If you are surrounded by a class of people that makes you
| genuinely second-guess the optics of your (appropriate) em-
| dash usage, I think that tells you a lot about what you need
| to change in your life. Likely you'll be happier in the
| company of people who know how to pick up a professionally
| written book or article.
| vessenes wrote:
| 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.
| gjvc wrote:
| in other news, hurrah for the oxford comma
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| 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.
| slashdave wrote:
| What about the poor negative sign? Nothing is more grating to
| my eye than using the hyphen in a plot.
| grensley wrote:
| 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.
| apothegm wrote:
| Or maybe they've been there all along and you just notice them
| more now because you're looking for them.
| nathias wrote:
| 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...
| jmye wrote:
| > I think it revealed something deep about the use of it that
| was always really cringe
|
| A punctuation mark was "cringe"? Seriously? Is this middle
| school?
| nathias wrote:
| yes, seriously, its usage was most often bad in a specific
| way that in most contexts it expressed a certain
| pretentiousness of the author
| sorcercode wrote:
| 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
| garciansmith wrote:
| Huh, I've observed the opposite, AI-generated text uses spaces
| most of the time. Might depend on language? Style guides I use
| (like Chicago) don't put spaces between em dashes so those
| always stand out immediately to me.
| slashdave wrote:
| The typography I learned insists on no spaces
| BeetleB wrote:
| The whole point is _not_ to change one 's writing style simply
| because it has been associated with LLMs. Don't feed the
| paranoia!
| sorcercode wrote:
| i think the genie is out of the box; but i stand with your
| sentiment!
| nikanj wrote:
| 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"
| thorum wrote:
| 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.
| slashdave wrote:
| I mean, you just used a spurious one in your post. A period
| would have been fine.
| submeta wrote:
| 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.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Sounds like a race to the bottom to me. If you know how to
| write well, keep at it.
| phlakaton wrote:
| 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. ;-)
| sho_hn wrote:
| 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?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > teachers drilling their students to simplify, simplify,
| simplify and emulate the ideal of Hemingway. Is that where this
| comes from?
|
| No. It comes from the fact that Americans are functionally
| illiterate and genuinely have no idea how to use or interpret
| em dashes or semicolons. They don't use them and don't expect
| anyone else to use them. The only time Americans see these
| punctuations are in the handful of classic books they're
| required to skim to pass high school English class.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why are Europeans so high on their own farts?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| In 2023 only 44% of American adults read at a high school
| level.
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp
| #...
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The drop from 2017 to 2023 is worrying, but my first
| reaction is to ask if that is only in the US or is it
| global? I couldn't find 2023 data for other countries,
| but the 2012-2017 PIAAC literacy data puts USA roughly in
| line with the rest of the world. I know people dunking on
| American literacy isn't new, it goes back easily to 2012
| or earlier. If the US is illiterate, then so is much of
| the world.
|
| screenshot for convenience:
| https://i.imgur.com/IMrCZch.png
|
| data explorer:
| https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/ideuspiaac/report.aspx
| idle_zealot wrote:
| That's depressing. For some reason this sub thread seems
| to think I'm talking about the US from the outside like a
| punching bag. I singled out the States because I'm more
| familiar with my country's stats.
| dxdm wrote:
| It is an honored tradition.
|
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/295674/origin-
| of...
| oasisbob wrote:
| > America has gone through 1-2 generations of English language
| teachers drilling their students to simplify, simplify,
| simplify
|
| I think so. Strunk & White is distinctly American. You see
| simplicity encouraged by others, including Virgina Tufte
| (_Syntax as Style_), and her well-known son Edward Tufte.
|
| When I was learning to write, em dashes were not even touched
| on. The idea that exotic punctuation could be required to
| express cogent thoughts in academia would get laughed out of
| the room.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Mostly they're a pain to enter on our keyboards.
| beasthacker wrote:
| 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.
| aniijbod wrote:
| "WHEREAS, the Large Language Model has merely mimicked a
| sophistication it cannot truly possess": says who(m)?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Says the LLM itself.
|
| (Yes, _of course_ the proclamation was written by Gemini. I
| gave it some guidance - that 's it).
| wavemode wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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.
| inopinatus wrote:
| 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
| julbov wrote:
| 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
| schoen wrote:
| I type Compose Hyphen Hyphen, which is pretty quick and easy!
|
| (One might feel that normal keyboards don't have a compose
| key.)
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _Well the em dash remains difficult to type on a normal
| keyboard_
|
| Not on Mac:
|
| hyphen/dash: -
|
| En-dash: [?]-
|
| Em-dash: |[?]-
| bdangubic wrote:
| thats a lot of effort :)
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Something about people successful with computers makes them
| quick to claim something is easy based on the number of
| steps needed, without regard to the ease of _remembering_
| all the arbitrary or sometimes contra-pattern steps
| required.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| In my defense, I remember it because I expect Option key
| to modify the original character and Shift key to make it
| bigger, so remembering that Option plus Shift makes
| hyphen into a bigger alternate version of it, i.e. the em
| dash, is not difficult. I acknowledge that not everyone
| would see it this way.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I'm naming my next cat Emdash!
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