it’s not just a punctuation mark—it’s a signifier of slop
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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I simply use a hyphen and cannot tell the difference 
English is my first and only language and idk what the difference is and honestly had only learned about the emdash when it became a signifier of AI.
It's a little longer than a hyphen, right?
It's called an em dash because it's the length of a typographic em, which was supposedly originally the width of the letter m (hence the name) but is now a bit longer than that. Accordingly, an en dash is half the length of an em dash, and a hyphen is shorter than that still.
— – -
Cool! What's the reason to use one of the three over another
The prescriptions for when you're "supposed" to use one or the other are as follows:
- A hyphen is for joining words together or indicating that a word has been split in the middle and will continue on the next line.
- An en dash is for ranges of numbers, or at the start of each item in a list. The en dash is also identical, at least in the font I'm looking at, to the minus sign used in math, as well as to the figure dash used for phone numbers and metrical feet. These symbols have separate Unicode points.
- An em dash is for a lot of other things, most notably uses similar to a colon or parenthesis, or as a way to show interruption. The em dash is also identical, at least in the font I'm looking at, to the quotation dash, which obviously has a separate Unicode point because we need as many Unicode points dedicated to singular straight horizontal lines as possible.
There are in fact even more horizontal line symbols with Unicode points than even these six.
But I myself never use en dashes: Ranges in numbers get a ~ like in CJK languages; lists get a hyphen or some other symbol; minuses are also hyphens; phone numbers get hyphens or spaces; and I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to write down a metrical foot.
I apparently have always conflated en dashes and hyphens, using what I guess is a minus sign for both: - but that looks like a hyphen to me, so is it not equivalent to the subtraction sign? The layout of my keyboard has it not just next to +/= but also the numpad where a minus should logically go . . .
The - seen on most keyboards corresponds to Unicode 002D and is known as the hyphen-minus. It does the duty of hyphen and minus as it's name suggests, and dash in some cases.
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The Venn diagram for this is absurd
Welcome to Unicode! Could we interest you in an non-breaking hyphen?
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The Unicode name for that symbol you typed is actually "hyphen-minus": it's a character created as a compromise in the early days of fixed-width typewriters, which has persisted into the present day as typewriters evolved into modern computer keyboards. The hyphen-minus is identical to a hyphen, which obviously has a separate Unicode point once again, but the hyphen-minus (as the name implies) does double duty as a minus sign as well. It's just that there is technically also a different "proper" minus sign that's a bit wider that you're "supposed" to use "if you can"… I just don't see a reason to bother with it.
I read all that and understand it, I'm pretty certain.
Still never using anything but a hyphen
Understandable
I actually wanted to say I really like your language posts even if I'm a dullard
I've been thinking of doing word of the day posts about my conlang lately, I've been writing drafts and all that.
I would read them and upbear them evennif i probably wouldn't comment
Wikipedia has a longer article on their usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
But what Erika says is the short version.
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Basically. I think it also miters differently than the standard dash/hyphen/minus sign. -
same tbh
Someone posted an article on here a bit ago from someone who says that AI detectors often trip on people who were educated in (former)british colonies because they were taught that kind of formal grammar.
I read it on the computer and im on the small pocket computer so idk
distinguishing between the different types of dash is bourgeois decadence
You shouldn't care so much what other people think about your writing style–makes life easier. Only negative people will bother you about it, the last type of MFer you should be taking criticism from.
Why don't you just use the - though? I never understood the need to remember the HTML code for the emdash when there's a dash on my keyboard.
Is this like a English major habit?
Usually when people us em dashes they just type a double hyphen: -- . I think in Word and similar programs that auto-corrects to being an em dash. Either way, it makes the text more legible since single hyphens already have several different uses.
I can't speak for whiskers165 but I can type an em dash by hitting shift+altgr+hyphen, and I use it because mmmmmm longboie
Altgr is truly beautiful, more keyboards should have it
The irony of using an EN dash in this comment about EM dashes
we need to start actively, rampantly polluting the training data as soon as possible
hurry, worker, take your cpu and your modem, and run a script to post fallacies on reddit and quora and stackexchange
This already happening at a massive scale, dead internet
edit: yes the grammar errors are to poison the AI dataset
Yup, AI training on AI slop.
So much of this was trained on student papers and guess who's writing those papers now.
We cannot outpace destroying the dataset as quickly as the AI itself is by endlessly vomiting trash
I've always used the n dash - don't care what is and isn't grammatically correct, I care about breaking up the cadence of my writing in interesting ways.
yeah I started using semicolons too, lmao
I use semicolons to feel clever; i have no idea how I'm supposed to do so. That felt correct though
It was. A semicolon is used where each sentence/clause can stand independently yet they are also related to one another; if you can start an entirely new sentence that makes sense by itself yet it could technically also be joined to the prior one using a comma then a semicolon fits.
Like the em-dash it's a really handy punctuation tool for people who tend to use lots of subclauses and run on sentences (not naming any names here lol) because if you're putting a list with commas in it then dropping a strategic and appropriately used semicolon improves readability because it signals "we're not listing things now and this isn't another subclause, we're moving on to a different phase of writing but also it's not a completely different thought - these two parts are interrelated."
I use semicolon when I've already used comma as a list separator and feel like it might be confusing to use comma for separating clauses.
Hell yeah, dude. Learning through trying to seem clever is at least a reason to learn
At the earliest age kids learn by failing over and over again and then, at some point, we decide that past a certain age it's no longer socially acceptable to learn by making attempts and, instead of people being polite and encouraging learning, people shame attempts and any mistakes. It's ridiculous imo.
When it comes to learning language there's definitely a developmental stage in our brains that makes it easier to pick up a new language but I swear half of the reason why it's hard to learn a new language as an adult is because of the deep-seated fear of humiliation that society instills in us over what is just a natural part of learning.
Fuck that shit, what a ridiculous arrangement and all we get out of it is stunted learning opportunities and higher rates of dementia.
im not quite certain what kind of dash usecase is the 'AI' one and frankly i don't care, if someone thinks ive used AI because of one kind of punctuation they're probably not a very discerning reader in the first place
I thought an em dash needed a space after it which ive never seen AI do
It's ableist is what is — what am I, an ADHD-haver, supposed to do? Use a period??? When there's more sentences to be made????? Questions I can do, but a period with a short sentence feels odd; though I've taught myself to do it, because I was told as a child that æong sentences with no period were grammatically wrong. Doesn't mean I enjoy though. It feels wrong.
Do what I (another ADHD-haver) do. (I overuse parentheses). AI would blush at my writing style
I used to use em dash pretty often and now I feel like I can't, and I am as angry as you are
I generally space my em dashes and sometimes put them immediately after other punctuation marks (old-fashioned compound points), which I know is "wrong" but sometimes I need a little extra space between the period/comma/whatever and the next clause, and sometimes little miss Emma Dash needs some extra space to breathe, don'tcha kno'.
You're absolutely right!