this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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me_irl
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em dashes are typographical faffery and have always been (in my opinion) a marker of writers who take themselves, and the surface level of their style, far too serious.
just use commas, my friend
em dashes, en dashes, and commas have different meanings and uses
aren't all of them "do a short pause"?
no.
For a speaker/listener, yes. But for a reader, it has additional value.
I don't remember where I first read em dashes, but there were times when I felt like something didn't quite match any of the others I usually use ^[parentheses, colons (inline or list-starters), semicolons] and ended up with a feeling that putting a dash over there made sense.
I also didn't know the terminologies for these different kinds of dashes, when I started using them.
Just use commas, my friend
vs.
Just use commas -- my friend
It doesn't work very well.
dashes cannot always replace commas, but commas can replace dashes.
thus - commas are more powerful
thus, commas are more powerful
Amusingly enough, one use case for em dashes is a pause where a comma would be too weak — refuting your assertion.
Also, you used a hyphen.
not actually a hyphen, a minus (not that this matters to me in the slightest)
I'm sorry, but "the pause is too weak" sounds squarely in the area of faffery to me.
hyphen and minus is the same punctuation symbol in different contexts, at least how most people, including you, signify the mathematical symbol.
so… yeah. pretty clear it doesn't matter to you since you speak authoritatively about it while being incorrect
you think I don't know this - I know I don't care about it
so… you know you're wrong, but you go around correcting people? why?
Because they really feel they're right, and that's what matters — right?
it's like being an atheist and therefore not caring about the details of transsubstantiation. irrelevance.
it's interesting you would phrase your simile like that because it seems much more like being an atheist and then having a strong opinion that the miracle of transubstantiation happens in the hindgut, even though no theology calls for that.
Or being a Tesla owner and therefore not caring about democracy
It's more along the lines of the comma is too weak for the pause. Likewise, there are places where the em dash is too strong for the pause.
v2 here though?