In fact, Robert Bringhurst, author of The Elements of Typographic Style – which is more commonly known as the unofficial bible of the modern typographer – also argues that dashes in text should be made with en dashes rather than em dashes. I like to think of it as inspired design.
Because we want the words we write to convey a certain aesthetic, we actually use en dashes in the place of em dashes. In fact, here at Vela, we don’t use em dashes at all. So, if you’ve got a discerning eye, you’ll notice that the ONLY place we’ve used em dashes in this article is, well, in the em dash section. They take up a lot of space and really affect how a sentence or paragraph looks. Sounds great, right? But here’s the thing, em dashes are - not to be rude - kind of horsey looking. This makes the keyboard marginally functional for Spanish. Also em dashes have spaces on either side of them, unlike en dashes. The keyboard extension is oddly incomplete, with missing punctuation symbols: no double quotes, no inverted, no right chevron or greater symbol, no em-dash. (Finally, something that makes sense in this whole mess!)īut, other than length, how does the em dash differ from the en dash? While the en dash is used as a bridge for similar items, the em dash is used to separate ideas or signal an abrupt change in thought (Her new roommate was quiet and polite - quite unlike her previous tenant.). Then it would stand to reason that an em dash is as long as an M is wide, right? Yep, you got it. If the en dash is as long as an N is wide,
Em dash on keyboard mac manual#
Other style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), use an en dash without spaces instead.Īnd you thought the hyphen was the easiest mark of the bunch, didn’t you? One last hyphen usage rule: The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, which Vela follows as its in-house style guide, uses a hyphen with no spaces around it to indicate ranges (Jan. UNLESS (because there’s always an unless) the modifier that would be hyphenated before a noun occurs after a form of the verb “to be.” Then, the hyphen is kept to avoid confusion (The children are soft-spoken. To add another layer of confusion, words that you would compound before the noun they modify (The team scored a last-minute touchdown.) aren’t compounded when they come after the noun (The team scored a touchdown at the last minute.). The adverb “very” and all adverbs that end in -ly are very clearly exempt from the compound-modifier rule (see what I did there?). Simple rule, right? Well, of course there’s an exception. They’re used to link two words to create a compound modifier (full-time job, well-known man, second-quarter earnings).
0 kommentar(er)
