I wonder how many em dashes are real vs interpreted.
I love an em-dash, but I have never typed one on purpose; they are all just two minus in a row and I use them wrong – with a space around (*inspect source to see that lemmy translates for me). I abuse them like I abuse semicolons. They are a typographical tick that indicates a pause or pivot when I translate my thoughts to text.
I can imagine a human manuscript editor turning punctuation like a comma into an em-dash when it makes sense, but I can’t imagine a developer ever specifically typing out one – with the need to either know or look up the unicode for it. The only relevant place would be a comment, but even then IDE’s are not generally known for their tendency to replace typed characters with something else.
Maybe some tool in the pretty-print/code-formatter ecosystem added that as a feature? But var-- is so common that I can’t imagine that’d be a good idea, even in a comment.
My understanding was that en-dash was a range, and em-dash was a change in topic or a parenthetical, so I’ve been using the wrong one but for the right reason. This may be an American style distinction, though. Time to jump into a new rabbit hole.
I wonder how many em dashes are real vs interpreted.
I love an em-dash, but I have never typed one on purpose; they are all just two minus in a row and I use them wrong – with a space around (*inspect source to see that lemmy translates for me). I abuse them like I abuse semicolons. They are a typographical tick that indicates a pause or pivot when I translate my thoughts to text.
I can imagine a human manuscript editor turning punctuation like a comma into an em-dash when it makes sense, but I can’t imagine a developer ever specifically typing out one – with the need to either know or look up the unicode for it. The only relevant place would be a comment, but even then IDE’s are not generally known for their tendency to replace typed characters with something else.
Maybe some tool in the pretty-print/code-formatter ecosystem added that as a feature? But
var--is so common that I can’t imagine that’d be a good idea, even in a comment.For pedantry’s sake:
Two dashes –
--– in Markdown is usually rendered as an en-dash – more common in British-adjacent styles and usually surrounded by spaces.Three dashes—
---—in Markdown is rendered as an em-dash—more commonly associated with American styles and usually (though not always) without spaces.Hah. Neat!
For pedantry…
My understanding was that en-dash was a range, and em-dash was a change in topic or a parenthetical, so I’ve been using the wrong one but for the right reason. This may be an American style distinction, though. Time to jump into a new rabbit hole.
They probably write code in Microsoft Word
I used to write websites in Notepad. It was kind of like digital Amishness.
At least notepad won’t fuck with your formatting for you
Absolutely insane ide choice. Wonder if visual studio tries to add those too.
It, thankfully, does not