Post #3626065
2026-03-23 01:08 UTC
@david_bardos@mementomori.social @scribblanitea@cupoftea.social @daj@gofer.social Part of Gridranger's treatise says "Those are en dashes. Since there is no button for them on the keyboard, non-technical people struggle to type them on PC. The most common text editor, Word has some automation to replace normal dashes with them."
Er - "normal dashes"? - surely the only things he is trying to replace are the things the keyboard does offer you in a direct manner: HYPHENS. (I suppose by analogy with m-dashes and n-dashes they could be called i-dashes.)
Replies (1)
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@daj@gofer.social 2026-03-23 09:41
@RFPatterson@mastodon.nz @david_bardos@mementomori.social @scribblanitea@cupoftea.social I feel that these days it's a free for all. At school (that was a while ago for me), an en dash replaced 'and' or 'to' in some cases. Usually to separate a range. The em dash was to change topic, or flow, slightly. Nowadays I doubt the kids are even taught this. Lack of keyboard support, and that many fonts barely distinguish in size, make it almost superflous. Me: I feel I've lived long enough (56) to do what I want with my dashes. I managed to resist sprinkling a dash or two in here