In praise of em-dashes

[randy_byers]

My response to the recent screed against em-dashes is that I love em-dashes so much that half my love for silent movies is for the frequent use of double em-dashes in the intertitles:

Comments

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

I still have no idea what an em-dash is.
Chris

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's U+2014 (8212), of course!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

More seriously, from my layman's perspective an em-dash is a slightly longer dash than the typical dash or hyphen, which I think is also called an en-dash. It's typically used in pairs in the middle of a sentence to set off a sentence fragment that's a digression or elaboration outside the main point of the sentence.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

technically, a hyphen is shorter than an en-dash, but even less people use en-dashes correctly than use em-dashes correctly. Ideally a minus sign is different again, though it isn't always.
An em-dash is so called because it is generally about the width of a letter M, which is generally the widest letter, and the en-dash is about the width of a letter N, so an em-dash is usually about twice the width of an en-dash.
As usual, wikipedia contains far more than most of us would wish to know http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's particularly interesting that different countries use em-dashes and en-dashes for the same purpose, although then there's also the all-important question of spaces around the dash. I prefer spaces even with em-dashes. No, I don't know why! I probably shouldn't even have a preference, considering my low level of knowledge on the subject.