

On dashes, hyphens, and other important aspects of life. - nvk
https://medium.com/typography/989bb7902cf3

======
crux
This is going to be an unfair comment.

Today marks the first occasion that I saw the title of a post on HN, then saw
that it came from Medium, and on the basis of its domain name decided that it
would probably be a fluffy and superficial treatment of the topic alluded to
in the title, where typography (ironically enough) and a very generous
x-height gave the impression of substance to something that was in point of
fact really barely worth writing or reading in the first place.

Having noticed this thought arise, I decided I better go through to read the
article and see if I was right.

~~~
js2
This article reads like a piece from a content farm. I flagged it and going
forward the urge to flag everything from Medium will be hard to resist.

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jgrahamc
Writing 'twenty eight' as 'twenty-eight' is accepted practice? The looks very
odd to me. But perhaps that's a difference between British and American forms.

Also 'friendly-looking' isn't joining together two adjectives , it's making a
compound adjective.

~~~
wbobeirne
It makes sense, as it would remove the ambiguity of something like "Those are
twenty eight year olds." Am I referring to 20 children, or some number of
adults?

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Pxtl
I'll never understand typesetting fans. Two spaces after a decimal point is
confusing and incorrect (even though it has the advantage of using buttons
that are actually _on the keyboard_ ) whereas having three different kinds of
dash that are identical except for width (the middle one being generally
indistinguishable to the layperson's eye) is perfectly sensible.

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carlob
In HN style I'm going to comment by bashing a very minor detail of the
article: at my current page width the subtitle: "Below I cover the common uses
of three horizontal marks: the hyphen -, the en dash –, and the em dash —."
breaks lines so that a new line starts with a comma and that's very bad!

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sriharis
Here's more on dashes and hyphens: [http://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-
and-dashes.html](http://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-and-dashes.html)

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jstalin
Using the hyphen in "friendly-looking" is incorrect. The exception for hyphens
in compound adjectives is when the first adjective ends in "ly." It should be
"friendly looking couch."

[http://www.grammar.com/compound-adjectives/](http://www.grammar.com/compound-
adjectives/)

~~~
jonnathanson
"Friendly-looking" is correct (if a bit archaic), as "friendly" is an
adjective, not an adverb.

Most "-ly" descriptors are adverbs, and it is indeed incorrect to compound
"-ly" adverb-adjective combinations with a hyphen. (For example, "finely-
chopped garlic" is incorrect). But _adjectives_ that end in "-ly" can be
hyphenated. ("Friendly," "elderly," "dastardly," "squirrelly," "burly,"
"lovely," "ghastly," "deadly," and so on).

These days writers often choose not to hyphenate them, as compound-hyphenation
in general is dying out in contemporary usage. It often feels old-fashioned
and fussy in informal writing. But there is no rule prohibiting the compound-
hyphenation of adjectives with "-ly" endings.

~~~
jstalin
Thanks for the corrections! :)

~~~
jonnathanson
No worries. I dig the username, btw. :)

------
gbog
Is it common to use "she" for punctuation marks? Or is it a perversion of the
current trend in mixing he and she randomly?

Oh, and is "looking" really an adjective? It must be: this author is lecturing
us about English usage, I can't believe she wouldn't tell adjectives and verbs
apart.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Oh, and is "looking" really an adjective?

Among other things.

"looking" is a actually a present participle; this form functions as a part of
a compound verb used in forming continuous tenses, as a noun, and as an
adjective.

[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/present_participle](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/present_participle)

~~~
gbog
Ok, then looking is not an adjective, it forms an adjective compound with
another adjective.

~~~
ledge
Correct, a member of the same small POS group as 'smelling', 'feeling',
'sounding', 'tasting', and 'seeming'.

------
paul_f
The problem for me is remembering how to create the various dashes on a
typical keyboard.

~~~
chrismorgan
I type _Ctrl+Shift+U 2014 Space_ (U+2014 EM DASH) surprisingly regularly.
(That's with Ubuntu.) U+2013 is EN DASH and U+2010 is HYPHEN.

Does anyone else find that they know dozens of Unicode code points purely by
accident? Other useful ones in that block are U+2018, U+2019, U+201C and
U+201D, the left and right (first and third) single and double quotation
marks...

In the end, though, I _really_ wish everything supported Vim's digraphs. (e.g.
Ctrl+K l * produces λ.) I know even more of those than I know numeric
codepoints…

~~~
psuter
I find using the compose key easier than remembering Unicode points. For em
dash: `Compose - - -`, for en dash: `Compose - - .`.

------
tsm
While I think that proper em dash usage—like this—looks fantastic, I'd be
happy enough if somebody just ran s/ \- /\--/g on the internet.

~~~
dragonwriter
Note that different style manuals will suggest em-dashes set closed for that
use or en-dashes set open; either is better than hyphens (open or closed).

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transfire
Oh bother. Use `-` for hyphen and `--` for dash. That's it and that's all you
need. If a style transformer wants to convert `--` to &ndash; or &mdash;, fine
whatever. But f* the difference between the two.

Please, stop making things more more complicated than they need to be! It is
so f*ing tiresome.

------
acheron
My character set has 7 bits -- and that's the way I like it.

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danielweber
What was that green bar flashing across the top of the screen while I was
trying to read the article?

------
baddox
And what symbol is used for the "minus" operator?

~~~
ronaldx
Ah, for minus you should probably use &minus; (U+2212), which will typically
display at the same width as numerical figures.

Next question: should you use the same character for unary minus and binary
minus? That is, to represent negative numbers and subtraction? ;)

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zeckalpha
This leaves out hyphens at line breaks for long words.

