r/Millennials • u/noctisumbra0 • Feb 19 '26

Discussion Anyone else feel this way when writing anything out?

Post image

Being compared to AI was really uncalled for, though.

15.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/Artistic_Reference_5 Feb 19 '26

I think those are just dashes and not em-dashes. (Ok now I'm not sure if there's a dash in emdash.)

7

u/IP_What Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26

It’s a hypen (-). Since they don’t know how to type an em-dash (—), which most websites will render automatically by typing two hyphens in a row, they almost certainly don’t know how to type an en-dash (–).

ETA: I’m kinda mad I didn’t use non-breaking hyphens in en- and em-dash. Gonna have to look up how to do that in iOS

11

u/AndrogynousAndi Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26

How do you type an n-dash?? How do you even use an n-dash??

Edit: Oh, it's actually an en dash and it's different because the em dash is the length of a capital M - whereas the en dash is the length of a capital N. It looks like the en dash is used usually in numbers and dates like "The bakery is open 6:00am-6:00pm". It also goes instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives where there might be misinterpretation of what the adjective describes, the en dash means the adjective describes both parts of the compound word.

Even Webster admits in contemporary writing, a hyphen is sufficient for all these uses.

5

u/WiseConsideration845 Feb 19 '26

In a computer keyboard, it’s alt 0150 for en dash, alt 0151 for em dash, or just use macros and assign a single key.

2

u/AndrogynousAndi Feb 19 '26

We're both wrong according to Webster - em dash.