A second post
Another post, so the archive and the search index have something to chew on.
The en dash – always with spaces in running text when, as discussed in this section, indicating a parenthesis or pause – and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. Most typesetting and word processing expects word spacing to vary to support full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words it falls between. This can cause uneven spacing in the text, but can be mitigated by the use of thin spaces, hair spaces, or even zero-width spaces on the sides of the em dash. This provides the appearance of an unspaced em dash, but allows the words and dashes to break between lines.
The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words further exaggerated. En dashes may also be preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns, such as in newspapers and similar publications, since the en dash is smaller. In such cases, its use is based purely on space considerations and is not necessarily related to other typographical concerns.
An em dash may be used to indicate omitted letters in a word redacted to an initial or single letter or to fillet a word, by leaving the start and end letters whilst replacing the middle letters with a dash or dashes (for censorship or simply data anonymization). It may also censor the end letter. In this use, it is sometimes doubled.
An em dash may be used to indicate omitted letters in a word redacted to an initial or single letter or to fillet a word, by leaving the start and end letters whilst replacing the middle letters with a dash or dashes (for censorship or simply data anonymization). It may also censor the end letter. In this use, it is sometimes doubled.
The em dash is used in several ways. It is primarily used in places where a set of parentheses or a colon might otherwise be used.[47] It can also show an abrupt change in thought (or an interruption in speech) or be used where a full stop (period) is too strong and a comma is too weak, similar to that of a semicolon. Em dashes are also used to set off summaries or definitions.[47][48] Common uses and definitions are cited below with examples.