Comment by quietbritishjim
3 years ago
> I've never seen them in business or personal writing, and I probably never will.
En dash is all over the place in personal/business writing, even just in email, thanks to Word and Outlook autocorrecting a hyphen to an en dash whenever it's between two spaces (rightfully in my opinion). If you've never seen it then that surely says more about what you notice than the content of what you've read.
That doesn't necessarily contradict your point – if you never notice the distinction then what's the point? But it's different from how I read the implication of your post.
(Funnily enough, without thinking, I put an en dash in the paragraph above by holding down on hyphen in the Android keyboard, and only caught myself after I did it.)
>If you've never seen it then that surely says more about what you notice than the content of what you've read.
I'll agree with this. It also brings up the point, if punctuation isn't seen - is it useful? Probably not to me - maybe yes to others.
You might not be able to pick out the bassline in many of your favorite songs but that doesn't mean you wouldn't miss it were it not there.
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"Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are a kind of magic; their purpose is to be invisible. If the sleight of hands works, we will not notice a comma or a quotation mark but will translate each instantly into a pause or an awareness of voice [...] When the mechanics are incorrectly used, the trick is revealed and the magic fails; the reader's focus is shifted from the story to its surface."
- Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
Thank you. It seems you misread the discussion.
Following this thread, the discussion isn't about the existence or absence of punctuation. The discussion is about the case of three specific punctuation marks, which appear extremely similar if not identical. These punctuation marks are being discussed after reading an article about their differences, which are only apparent to those among us who find memorization more important than clarity.
In this exact context, the question is whether all three punctuation marks are needed when literally none of them is distinctive enough as punctuation from the other two. If you read the comment to which I had replied, you will see them also make that point.
3 replies →
Quoting Erik Spiekermann “Typography is like air. We only notice it when it's bad”
> if you never notice the distinction then what's the point?
Given there is usage of en dash in the wild as you mentioned, there's a possibility this may be a case of "you don't know what you got 'til it's gone."