Comment by krsdcbl
3 years ago
I strongly disagree.
By the same logic you might as well say: "why are we even kerning fonts, who cares if there's a few gaps when i write »irl«."
The fact that using different dashes does encode meaning in a subtle sense does have relevance for semantics -- but that's, imho, almost secondary to this argument, as it's not as grammatically relevant as commas and. periods, for example.
The primary importance of using the correct dashes is that it preserves a good flow for reading and is paramount to micro-typographic balance:
- A longer dash to link words that belong together is visually perceived as an interruption and doesn't feel like those two words are one
- In reverse, a shorter dash when switching context -- or interjecting another idea within a sentence -- doesn't slow the pace of the text flow enough, and your brain will read/intonate it the same way as when linking words.
- And at last, either of them won't preserve optical balance when displaying a numerical range, as numbers are wider than a hyphen, but narrower than an em space, which would result in either insufficient visual separation compared to spaces following said numbers, or too much of an optical gap within an entity that belongs together.
That's the barebones set of dashes that are relevant for a balanced typographical appearance, not made up pedantic complexity to annoy people. Otherwise we'd be taking about half and quarter em dashes and the likes.
> you might as well say: why are we even kerning fonts [...] is paramount to micro-typographic balance [...] is visually perceived as an interruption [...] won't preserve optical balance
These are typesetters concerns, not writers concerns. They are all context sensitive tweaks to what amounts to the same glyph.
If the rules for each have as well defined contexts as the article suggests, then it sounds like something more suited to ligatures and kerning.
Full glyph replacement ligatures were not something initially supported by all font formats, so perhaps the fact that they continuing to exist as separate characters is more of a historical detail. It's something that could easily be added with new fonts though.
Ligatures typically change the appearance of a character, they do not change the meaning. Merging the hyphen en the n-dash into the same character and then derive the correct one from the context (spaces around it) would be a whole new use of "ligatures".
From a software "separating of concerns" viewpoint it feels wrong to me to have your font renderer infer meaning. A pre-processor that replaces hyphens with the correct dash – like Word does – feels more sane to me.
> Ligatures typically change the appearance of a character, they do not change the meaning
Anyone can use a hyphen for all three purposes right now and people would understand the meaning, because the meaning is primarily derived from the context of surrounding glyphs. Only typesetters would complain that a subtly more appropriate glyph should be used for the purposes of refined optics and geometry etc.
Therefore an endash and emdash ligature could only change the meaning IF the context of each use case overlap. i.e if there is a valid glyph based context in which endash and emdash are both valid... which I don't think there is because that would be far too subtle.
Some fonts—like Inter—do this, but I see people complain that the font isn’t rendering exactly what they typed.
My favorite is that it will render 1920x1080, for example, as 1920×1080. I think the former looks terrible and unprofessional, especially when I see it in actual products rather than prose. So I really hope this catches on.
I’ve gone my entire life without knowing the difference and survived just fine.
It may not be entirely irrelevant, but it’s very close to it. A bit like saying your tie has to be knotted a specific way to look respectable. Very fun for the in-group, but completely incomprehensible to those outside.
Like, I’m not opposed to having a few silly things to learn just to separate those that can be bothered to pay attention from those that do not, but I’d be hard pressed to say it’s actually relevant outside of that.
> I’ve gone my entire life without knowing the difference and survived just fine.
That is an extremely low bar. People lived their entire lives without X for any X.
Text doesn't become unreadable when the dashes are used incorrectly, but (for me) when they're used correctly, they do make the text easier to read and digest.
Thank you for the post. I still don't want to learn & spend mental energy on which of 3 different dashes to use, but now I do see why people would want to (and I think the reasoning is solid, even if I don't personally want to bother with it :) ).
You started by talking about kerning fonts, which is a great analogy.
Building on that - kerning is awesome because stuff looks better and I don't need to do anything for it to happen. Would it work to have my display system figure out which type of dash to use automatically?
Like, a dash inside a word should be short (under the assumption that you're linking the words together) and dashes with whitespace around it should be longer (under the assumption that you're switching context/injecting an idea into a sentence).
Your message is somehow undermined by your use of “--” in place of “—”.
No it isn't--double-hypens are a great alternative to an em dash and are interpreted as such by many people and some software. GP's argument is for the grammatical functionality of differentiating dashes, not the specific symbols used.
That said, I don't use en dashes, if I want my numbers to line up I use a fixed-width font.
That’s a reason not to use figure dashes, which aren’t the same thing as en-dashes.
> No it isn't; double-hypens are a great alternative to an em dash and are interpreted as such by many people and some software. GP's argument is for the grammatical functionality of differentiating dashes, not the specific symbols used.
Use ;
Works just fine
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I find it unlikely that the comment was typed on a typewriter, or sent over a teletype. Computers and phones make it easy to type em-dashes if you want to do that. No sub-par alternatives are needed.
Did you know double dash is treated as one single longer than normal dash by default in iOS?
This character ‘—‘ looks like one long dash to me, even though I typed the dash button twice. What’s even crazier is if I type four dashes ‘——‘ it still looks like one even longer dash; even six ‘———‘ is a solid line, and I can delete it by pressing the backspace button once
I have no idea how to get my phone to display two short dashes side by side: ‘--‘ maybe I can fake it by puttin an emoji in between, knowing that hackernews will filter it out. Let’s see what happens.
Edit - ooh that totally works. I’d never really paid attention to how this feature worked before.
I did, hence my other comment in this thread — proper dashes are easy.
“--” can also be input on iOS by entering “- -” and then deleting the space. Or you can disable the “Smart punctuation” setting and type what you actually mean.
Why do we stop with hyphen, n and m dash? There are at least 30 different use cases, we should not reuse only 3 versions of some short line. Let's make 30 versions, one for each meaning. (cynicism)
Never really cares about anything that you're saying about how the dashes should work to imaginary group of people way into typography
Then don't use them? As a reader, I certainly appreciate when people do. When writing documents or HTML I use them because it adds clarity. When typing on a web form, I'll usually use "--" because it's visually similar and much easier to type on a US keyboard. No one, pedants included, have ever tried to correct me on it.
I also use capitalization and punctuation when I type while many people do not. It'd be great if they did, since it makes reading easier and takes almost no additional effort, but I'm not going to let it ruin my day. The parent comment is about why the distinction in dashes matters and has virtually nothing to do with typography enthusiasm, but rather reader comprehension. If you don't want to integrate that information into your life, great, but that's not really a refutation. For my part, I found it interesting. Even though I use em-dashes I learned more about how they're helpful. If you don't want to use them, I'm almost positive no one is ever going to correct you.
> Then don't use them?
I don't and; but dumb tools replace -- with em-dash which breaks shit.
> If you don't want to use them, I'm almost positive no one is ever going to correct you.
Still have to look at it and suffer consequences of dumb editors replacing -- with em-dashes when someone innocently tries to just say commandline parameter
It also looks like you’re drawing attention to something — the use of the double dashes — in making a deliberate choice to break from the norm. Whereas if you just follow the way most people use dashes - single dashes, not double - then it doesn’t really stand out, it just looks ‘normal.’ You’re used to seeing it styled that way. It feels different.