Comment by schrodinger
4 months ago
In my experience the em dash is still correctly used, the modern style has just evolved to put a space around it.
So:
* fragment a—fragment b (em dash, no space) = traditional
* fragment a — fragment B (em dash with spaces) = modern
* fragment a -- fragment b (two hyphens) = acceptable sub when you can’t get a proper em to render
But en-dashes are for numeric ranges…
em dash plus spaces is quite rare in English style guides. It’s usually either an em dash and no spaces or an en dash with them.
Apologies, now that I've been Beider-Meinhoff'd, I've realized you're correct and I've been misreading en dashes and em dashes. Thank you!