I'm glad you've moved on from the Oxford comma controversy.

April 29, 2023 9:20 AM

Now, why — or why not — should I put spaces around em dashes? I'm seeing contradictory stances among even authoritative sources. I don't really care who says what. I care about what's "logical" which is connected to the pattern which can convey my intent quickly and accurately across a variety of situations and sentence and idea structures.

Yes, what people expect will be read smoothly and without distraction, and thus communicates best.

I mean other than that.

There are two writing contexts I care about:

1. Situations in which I prefer not to appear a rube; and

2. Most of the time, in which I prefer to be part of the ruggedly independent example-setting rules-are-written-by-those-who-actually-do-stuff non-class, and just want to do what actually makes sense.

It's fine if they call for different conventions.

Posted to "grab bag" because I care about the opinions of everyone, not just writers or writing fans.

Thank you! (Have fun?)

posted by amtho to Grab Bag (42 answers total)

It doesn’t matter as long as your use of em dashes is consistent within a given document or set of documents — pick one and run with it. I suggest making your selection based on what is most legible in the typeface/design situation of the document you’re writing for. I don’t usually do spaces, but I did them in this comment because you set a precedent in this web page with your post. When a style guide is available for the document you are writing, defer to that.
posted by Gymnopedist at 9:43 AM on April 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Looking for a logical reason is a fool's errand. These types of "rules" vary so much because they're mostly arbitrary and it doesn't really matter. You will communicate fine either way. There is no deep, underlying pattern behind the use of spaces (or not) that means one is better for conveying ideas.

People like to get worked up about these "rules" anyway, I guess. Sometimes it's for benign reasons (it's fun to have a low stakes argument about something trivial), but sometimes these reasons are malignant (reinforcing one's own sense of superior social status or intelligence based on superficial mastery of cultural shibboleths).

Personally, I don't use spaces because I am lazy--and my word processors automatically convert two dashes into an em dash if I don't.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:44 AM on April 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is what style guides are for. The lowest effort call is to pick one and adhere to it so you don’t need to think it through each time.

That said, I like spaces just because.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:53 AM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

To me the only real concern is the practical one that a space will cause most software to see it as a place to break a line, potentially resulting in a line starting with a dash, which is obviously bad.
posted by staggernation at 9:54 AM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

The Chicago Manual calls for no spaces around an em dash. But personally, I think it typically looks better with spaces, so that's what I would preferentially use. As a reader, I just notice inconsistency, since so many people randomly drop in en- and em-dashes and randomly use spaces.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:56 AM on April 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't think anyone is going to think you're a rube based on your spacing around em-dashes. As you say, authoritative sources disagree. Also, one thing that tends to get ignored in these discussions on MetaFilter is that British and US punctuation conventions can be very different. Your question led me to search Chicago Manual of Style, which is why I now know that contemporary British writing would use en-dashes with spaces around them where Chicago would use em-dashes with no space.

As others have said, if you have a style guide, use that. If you don't, just be consistent.
posted by FencingGal at 9:57 AM on April 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

There is no right or wrong; it's fashion. So it depends whom you're trying to impress and which style guide they use. I got a "silver" instead of a "gold" once because I used CMOS's em dash style in my submission instead of AP's em dash style—but there was no style guide listed for the contest I was entering, so that should've been no problem. Nevertheless, one of the ignorant hayseeds judging the contest commented on my "error," whereupon I congratulated myself on at least not winning gold; I should have had the sense not to submit the wretched thing at all. (But really I probably overused dashes, because I always do, and shouldn't have won anything.) (I have Emily Dickinson Syndrome.) (Emily Dickinson put spaces before and after her dashes, if that's any help making the decision.)
posted by Don Pepino at 10:15 AM on April 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

You put spaces around them to accentuate their beauty. At least, I do.
posted by dobbs at 10:44 AM on April 29, 2023 [13 favorites]

I put spaces. It's partly cuz I like the look but mostly because it makes my writing more robustly word-searchable.

I am of the school that presentation details can and should be adjusted after, and as part of a different process than, the actual writing. So when writing I put one space after a period, but the document can be kerned later so there is a larger gap after a period. Same could be done with dashes if I cared.
posted by grobstein at 10:45 AM on April 29, 2023

I'm a professional copy editor, so as a matter of fact I *do* have a dog in this fight. Having said that, I'd tell you that the #1 way to be a non-rube is to just make a decision either way and stick to it. Consistency is way, way more important than one over the other.

(If pressed, okay, I'm a Chicago girl so I say no spaces.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:04 AM on April 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think spaces is becoming more common over time, so I use it because it looks a bit more modern and pleasing to the eye, at least to me, but either is fine if consistent.
posted by ssg at 11:08 AM on April 29, 2023

I feel like I tend to see em dashes without spaces more often than not in books. I feel like I tend to see en dashes with spaces more often than not in writing from outside of North America. I know for a fact that this is a matter of house style and personal preference rather than any sort of rule, and I strongly believe that it makes no difference to people's ability to read smoothly and without distraction. (In my personal experience, there are very few people outside of editors and designers who ever notice. Pretty much everyone else will type a single hyphen with a random and often asymmetric number of spaces if left to their own devices and be surprised if that's corrected.)

Just be consistent, at least within a given piece.
posted by trig at 11:14 AM on April 29, 2023

I think it's a clash between generally accepted British style – which is en dashes with spaces – and American style—which is em dashes with no spaces—and I'm not aware of any American style guide that calls for spaces around em dashs when used thusly to set off a parenthetical remark.
posted by drlith at 11:20 AM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

Oh, I see that AP style calls for spaces. Fuck AP.
posted by drlith at 11:22 AM on April 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Yep, I'll second the line break issue, as a relatively objective and logical
reason to avoid spaces. Unless you want to manually or procedurally make those non-breaking spaces, which varies from
easy to impossible, depending on the software you're using or who's doing it by hand.
posted by SaltySalticid at 11:25 AM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Shift-Option-hyphen for life, spaces on either side. That said, I'll follow the house rules.
posted by emelenjr at 11:39 AM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

(A few folk here have mentioned en dashes vs em dashes. En dashes are a little shorter than em dashes – in most fonts an en dash is as wide as a capital N and an em dash is as wide as as a capital M—and that’s where the names come from. I am team em dash—and American—but if you want the spaces you should use the shorter en dash.)
posted by thecaddy at 11:40 AM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

That’s what I’ve always gone by: space around an en dash but not around an em dash.
posted by slkinsey at 12:18 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you to the "it doesn't matter," "fool's errand," and "use a style guide" constituencies for weighing in early so that we could all move on.

Also, apparently Western Michigan University does care, and doesn't explain their reasoning for choosing one version over the other. I don't care much about them, though.

I should clarify: I'm totally not asking for advice about what _I_ should do; I'm very much able to make up my own mind, and I don't really care what you think :)

However, just as sorting whites and colors before laundering seems like wasted effort until someone explains about dye bleed, and toilet paper dangling in the back might seem neater to some and danging in front more convenient to others, I seek to understand lines of reasoning that I hadn't discovered on my own.

I personally always put spaces around them. I think it helps fast reading by making the separation between words more instantly visible, and fast comprehension by making the separation between ideas visible in the greater separation between phrases. But I assume I'm missing a valid argument for leaving the spaces out, and I want to know what it is.

The next person who says "that's just how it's done" or "people are used to it because [x authority said so]" will get my gratitude for engaging at all -- seriously, I appreciate it -- but that's really not what I'm after.

WHY did the ORIGINAL person who came up with a no-space rule possibly think that's a good idea? Hypotheses welcome, but I'm even more interested in why you think it's a good idea.
posted by amtho at 12:19 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I edited a co-op newspaper for 25 years and split the difference— em dash with one space following— consistently. Yes, I read a lot of British literature.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 12:24 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thank you to the "it doesn't matter," "fool's errand," and "use a style guide" constituencies for weighing in early so that we could all move on.

I loved this.

I use spaces because that's what our style guide says, but I can think of a logical reason to use them, though I can't know if that was the reason this came up historically. Once I was taking a class, and the professor spoke with wonder about how "some people" can tell the difference between a zero and an O by looking. I was surprised - to me the difference is obvious - but I thought maybe it was because I'd been a professional copy editor for years. I also was once hired partly because I was the only person doing the copyediting test who noticed that a period was in bold. So I wonder if what seems to professional word people like the obvious difference between an en-dash and an em-dash isn't so obvious to the average reader. If that's the case, the spaces around an em-dash would make it clear that it's not meant to connect two words so that they're treated as one entity.

Just a guess, but you seem OK with guesses.
posted by FencingGal at 12:46 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I love guesses! I agree that it adds clarity. (I'd love your guess about an argument for the opposite approach, honestly).

I can tell zeros from ohs, but a bold period? Impressed.
posted by amtho at 12:52 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

No spaces. ime can otherwise run into line break issues.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 12:56 PM on April 29, 2023

Spaces around or at least following. An en dash is connecting things, an em dash is separating things. Most punctuation at least has a space somewhere... quotes and parenthesis before and after the open and close but not in the middle, apostrophes mostly not. At least get one space in there unless...it's...for...dramatic...effect.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:05 PM on April 29, 2023

Best answer: Originalism in typography is always filled with hand-waveyness, but there are perhaps a couple of practical historical considerations for not having spaces:

• Saving paper: no, really. Book paper used to be really expensive (in early USA printing, make that incredibly expensive) so cramped, space-saving typography was preferred by publishers
• Linotype safety: for some decades after its introduction in the late 19th century, a Linotype typesetting machine could spray hot metal over the operator if there were too many spaces in a line. So fewer spaces = happy operators not blinded by a shower of Lead/Bismuth alloy.

Personally ⸺ and I realize this is not a widely-held opinion ⸺ mirrored pairs of mutton quad + 3 em dash + thin space is the only way of doing it. Having survived working for a reference publisher with two competing style guides, each almost perfectly contradicting the other, I do what I please.
posted by scruss at 1:07 PM on April 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

The reasons for or against spacing come down to printing.

When space was tight, the newspaper style of writing evolved: simplified sentences that cut out extraneous words (that, for example). If you needed an em dash, that's fine, but adding extra spaces around the widest character that you'd be setting just eats up space that could be used to cram in a couple of extra letters, and maybe even a whole word, depending on where the word falls on the line.

As for why spaces are added, that's also an argument that originates with layout and design explains one source. "Newspapers and other publications — ourselves included — that follow the AP style guide include spaces around the em dashes. The reason behind this? Newsletters are packed with narrow columns that don’t make for a spacious look. Therefore, adding spacing on both sides of the em dash creates a spacious impact on the text layout. This makes it easy for the eye to read."

There really is no one answer, it's a "styles evolve for different reason" answer. Personally, I'm on team no spaces with an em dash and spaces with an en dash, but I've been forced to use so many style guides in my life (and ones that give highly questionable directives, IMHO), that I just go with the flow and don't fight it (unless I've got the opportunity to work on a style guide update).

As for the "width of the letter M" explanation, here's a more precise way of thinking about it. "However, the em dash—technically, a printing term—has nothing to do with the width of a capital 'M,' it’s based on an entirely different and dynamic measurement: the point side of the typeface itself.

"So for a typeface being set in 12 point, an 'em' is 12 points wide, and so is an em dash. If you change the type to 14 points, the em changes to 14 points as well. An em is simply the horizontal measure exactly corresponding to the type size."
posted by sardonyx at 1:12 PM on April 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm British so I use en dashes with spaces. Em dashes without a space look incredibly old fashioned to me. Then my back justification is distinguishing between a hyphen and an em dash is a split second more time consuming.
posted by plonkee at 1:12 PM on April 29, 2023

Back in the Stone Age when I was attempting a degree in graphic design with a focus on print typography putting spaces around em dashes vs what my professor and Chicago style declared was “right” was a thing that I got so het up about that it cost me my grade. They were both wrong and fuck ‘em.

The issue for me is that en dashes and hyphens look too similar in most fonts. If you get into the nitty gritty of punctuation, there are rules for when to use a hyphen or an en dash depending on which words are compound words or prefixes, and of course these are all changing all the time depending on the medium and the vernacular. For clarity’s sake I think hyphens and en dashes should be combined into a single character that is never used with spaces around it — and em dashes should always have spaces. However, if a thought is being cut off in dialogue, then the em dash should b—

Anyway, I’m a hypocrite. Because when I type online - such as on AskMe, tumblr, and in discord - I use hyphens with spaces around them when I should be using em dashes. This is due to me typing mainly on an iPad virtual keyboard with horrendous special character access. I seem to get my point across okay regardless; at least I have semicolons to soothe me.
posted by Mizu at 2:06 PM on April 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Regarding the AP rule specifying a space before and after the em dash, I think it was instituted because without spaces flanking the em dash, the word-dash-word group could be taken as a hyphenated word, especially when the linotype operator substituted an en dash for the em dash in order to justify the line in the column. Requiring spaces on both sides of the dash eliminates that problem, regardless of whether it's an em or en dash (or just a hyphen as I often see these days).
posted by beagle at 2:09 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I favor spaces, simply because they improve readability. It's easier to miss the em dashes, and harder to make out the clause that they punctuate, when there are no spaces.

It's the same reason I still use 2 spaces after a period — because it makes the space at the end of a sentence easier to distinguish from a space between words — but that's a whole other subject.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:14 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here is the logic from the New York Times official style guide:

Because columns in print are usually narrow, with few words to a line, the [em-]dash should be surrounded by spaces; they provide openings for the computer to distribute spacing evenly when justifying the type.

posted by Charity Garfein at 2:27 PM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

An em dash and a hyphen are dramatically different in size (hyphens being smaller still than en dashes) so, even without spaces, it's hard to confuse an a hyphen joining words with an em dash joining clauses. So I'm on team 'save space' here, because the spaces don't add to the distinctiveness of the dash. (I believe en dashes were for number ranges and similar, so situationally distinct and not subject to the same confusion even though their size is a bit easier to misinterpret.)

When I leaned to type I learned old school on a typewriter. I was taught that em-dash equivalents were three hyphens (though, now I look it up, some people say two), and I note that adding two spaces to that when you're in a fixed width font like Courier would have been very space hungry. Typewriters came after movable type, though, so this is probably not the source of any convention.

And it's been a long while, but I think this is how TeX thinks - two dashes become an en dash and three an em? Knuth might have been pulling that from typing conventions.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 2:41 PM on April 29, 2023

I believe en dashes were for number ranges and similar, so situationally distinct and not subject to the same confusion even though their size is a bit easier to misinterpret.

En dashes are used in compound modifiers if one element of the modifier has more than one word or is hyphenated. For instance, "T cell–specific marker" uses an en dash instead of a hyphen because "T cell" is one entity.

A few years ago, there was a big controversy because a high-up editor of the Chicago Manual of Style wanted to just eliminate the use of en dashes in these situations in the newest edition. There was a huge outcry, and it never happened. I can't find anything about it now, but I remember it clearly.
posted by FencingGal at 2:59 PM on April 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style (about as close as you can get to being authoritative on this type of subject), says to use the en-dash-with-spaces:

Use spaced en dashes – rather than close-set em dashes or spaced hyphens – to set off phrases. A typographer will use an em dash, three-quarter em, or en dash, depending on context or personal style. The em dash was the nineteenth-century standard and is still prescribed in many editorial style books, but such long dashes were rare in European printed books before the end of the seventeenth century, when typography was losing its serenity and reserve. ¶ Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side.

As a side note, the em is equivalent to the type size, as noted by sardonyx above. The en is equal to half an em, M/2.
posted by stopgap at 4:07 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

How much is that froggie in the window, that really depends on on the font and authorial choice. I have definitely run into situations where the same sized dash was used for both hyphenated words and asides, and books where the size difference wasn't that apparent.

This is why I'm strongly in favor of spaces around dashes that aren't supposed to be be hyphenating words. It's an unambiguous visual cue that doesn't rely on authors knowing the difference between types of dashes and the ebook / web browser / etc displaying the dashes in precisely the way originally intended.
posted by Ahniya at 5:51 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I like / favorite comments here very rarely, half because I see it as a bookmark system that I know I'll never actually go back to, and half because I'm often reading Mefi without logging in. I mean, I favorite some content here maybe a handful of times per year. I just now logged in just so I could like scrull's comment, which had me spitting out my drink in laughter.
posted by intermod at 8:45 PM on April 29, 2023

Interesting advice and reading in this thread.

I don't have much to add to their suggestions, but I would like to say that if you want to see some virtuoso dash usage, with widely varying purpose and intensity, read Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne. Hell, just open it to any page — it'll have more dashes than many books entire.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:23 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm seeing contradictory stances among even authoritative sources.

I mean, this is true of all typographical and linguistic conventions. Different style guides prescribe different standards because there is no test that could prove or disprove the objective validity of any given standard.

All style guides are just human inventions, and the standards they prescribe are just the personal opinions of their authors. This isn't physics.

why — or why not — should I put spaces around em dashes?

1. Because the style guide that you've chosen to adhere to (whether it's a published style guide that is widely used, or your own personal style guide) says that you should.

That's it. That's the only reason.

As others have said, consistency within a given document (or collection of documents) is the most important thing.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:46 AM on April 30, 2023

"I should clarify: I'm totally not asking for advice about what _I_ should do; I'm very much able to make up my own mind, and I don't really care what you think :)"

Uh-huh. So now it's clear that you didn't want us to answer your 1. because you don't care what we think. If you didn't want us to answer 1., you shouldn't have asked 1. (Remember your 1.? Let's revisit: "why — or why not — should I put spaces around em dashes? ...I care about: 1. Situations in which I prefer not to appear a rube.")

To whom do you not want to appear a rube, and in which situations? You did not specify. Do you not want to appear a rube to ignorant hayseeds in situations wherein they could object to your dash styling and award you a silver? Then I can answer from experience: either 1. don't submit the wretched thing at all or 2. find out which style guide the ignorant hayseeds use and follow that style guide.

Sors for weighing in again after you moved on, but that is what you asked.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:43 AM on April 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Fair point.

I meant to focus on context number two, but I didn't make that clear.

Also, "care" can mean a lot of things. I meant my ego (in the Freudian sense) was not at risk, although there are circumstances in which writing according to one of the prescribed systems is a filter used by someone who may have some situational power. How to do that is something that's easy to Google or read a style guide for; I come here for the more difficult questions.
posted by amtho at 9:52 AM on April 30, 2023

I come here for the more difficult questions.
Or, in this case, the impossible ones.

How can you be part of the ruggedly independent example-setting rules-are-written-by-those-who-actually-do-stuff non-class, and ...do what actually makes sense?

You can't. Those who actually did stuff and wrote rules to help them do the stuff were typesetters. Unless you're writing something that's going to be typeset by hand, you can't do what actually makes sense anymore. You can do what used to make sense. That would be rugged AF of you.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:05 AM on April 30, 2023

Response by poster: There's usually no one right answer unless one constructs boundaries, which are always the product of culture or imagination and thus, in a sense, dependent on one's personal choice of authority. "Right" as in correct is a matter of personal values.

My values include the occasional use of emotionally florid language to make the meaningless feel, if not meaningful, at least lively.

They also, however, include never making another person feel more alienated or dismissed. I am sorry that my language was a bit brutish. I think you are justified in being upset.
posted by amtho at 10:33 AM on April 30, 2023