Comment by oxguy3

I am more likely to separate two thoughts with space-endash-space than with an em dash and no spaces. It just feels weird to not type spaces, and I don't want to do space-emdash-space because that would feel like an enormous gap; if the two clauses need that much distance from each other, why not just split them into two sentences?

I'm sure this goes against many style guides, but for everyday use it's what feels most natural to me.