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Comment by kimixa

10 hours ago

The Oxford style guide page 18 https://www.ox.ac.uk/public-affairs/style-guide

> m-dash (—)

> Do not use; use an n-dash instead.

> n-dash (–)

> Use in a pair in place of round brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces.

Remember I'm specifically speaking about british english.

HMRC style guide: "Avoid the shorter en dash as they are treated differently by different screen readers" [0].

But I see what you mean. There used to be a distinction between a shorter dash that is used for numerical ranges, or for things named after multiple people, and a longer dash used to connect independent clauses in a sentence [1]. I am shocked to hear that this distinction is being eroded.

[0] https://design.tax.service.gov.uk/hmrc-content-style-guide/

[1] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~tmj32/styleguide/