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Article #237Re: em-dashes
From: Scott Horne
Date: Thu, 06 Jul 1989 15:08
Date: Thu, 06 Jul 1989 15:08
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1807 bytes
In article <1168@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>, jwright@atanasoff (Jim Wright) writes:
>
> OK, I've wondered for a long time, now I'm going to ask. Should em-dashes
> have surrounding spaces or "bump-up" against the surrounding words?
>
> (1) This might be correct --- but is it?
> (2) This might be correct---but is it?
>
> So which is correct, and why?
The second---by convention, I suppose. It looks much better. Besides, no
other punctuation marks are separated by spaces from the surrounding words.
Even if you were to use the spaces, though, you should do it thus:
This is incorrect~--- but better than Sentence~(1) above, as
it will never leave the dash at the beginning of a line.
In net.typing, I use two hyphens for the em dash (and the en dash), which is
conventional for monospaced text.
--Scott
Scott Horne Hacker-in-Chief, Yale CS Dept Facility
horne@cs.Yale.edu ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
Home: 203 789-0877 SnailMail: Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520
Work: 203 432-6428 Summer residence: 175 Dwight St, New Haven, CT
Dare I speak for the amorphous gallimaufry of intellectual thought called Yale?
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!yale!Horne-Scott From: Horne-Scott@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: em-dashes Message-ID: <65569@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Date: 6 Jul 89 15:08:54 GMT References: <65479@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <1168@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> Sender: root@yale.UUCP Reply-To: Horne-Scott@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne) Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven, CT 06520-2158 Lines: 28 In-reply-to: jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright)