Emdash fans!

[kagan@wandering.shop]

@AnneTheWriter1 @mcc I use non-breaking spaces before the dash for exactly this reason. I *hate* when the dash comes at the beginning of a line.

[bucknam@mastodon.social]

@mcc Robert Bringhurst would like to have a word with everyone who answered this poll — except those who use spaces on both sides of an em dash.

[minego@pdx.social]

@mcc I'm so relieved that the majority of responses aren't from monsters.

[disorderlyf@todon.eu]

@mcc I almost never use them, but I typically don't use spaces when I do. I don't know if it'd say I'm "not a fan" because that implies malice where my actual feelings are apathy. I just personally reach for commas or semicolons before I typically reach for an em dash.

[thezorse@hear-me.social]

@mcc

Yes, but I usually just use a hyphen. It takes a couple of steps to do an em dash on a computer.

[ronjeffries@mastodon.social]

@mcc sometimes both sides for emphasis, but believe that no spaces is "correct".

[slotos@toot.community]

@mcc

Ukrainian — spaces around em dash always. Leading space is skipped when em dash starts the sentence on a new line of the dialogue.

English… no spaces around em dashes that surround parenthetical clauses, but in sentences like the first one, my Ukrainian habits win.

[leaverou@front-end.social]

@mcc IIRC Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style argues for thin spaces around the em dash. No option in the poll for that!

[brianenigma@xoxo.zone]

@mcc “Within text? Spaces — and on both sides. Used as an attribution byline? Only space on the left.” —Me

[aslakr@mastodon.social]

@mcc But maybe not full space? Like — this? In this case thin space. But not narrow non-break space as used in si units. like e.g. 42 km

[arem@mstdn.ca]

@mcc I space it the same way as a regular hyphen. Spaced if standalone - No space if part of a mind—bending compound word.

[mausmalone@mastodon.social]

@mcc my word processor of choice (Libre Office Writer) doesn't auto-correct to em-dash until after you hit the second space.

[kanamauna@sauropods.win]

@mcc

Both sides because it is easier for my crap eyes to read.

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@mcc I voted yes, but normal spaces are just as wrong as no spaces. You need hair spaces (U+200A) of no less than ⅙ em width.

% em dash
\def\dash{\texorpdfstring%
 {\unskip\kern.16667em\relax\textemdash\penalty\exhyphenpenalty\hskip.16667em\relax}%
 { — }%
}%
% for footnotes, etc.
\newcommand{\Hair}{\unskip\kern.16667em\relax}%

This will define a \dash that eats the spaces you leave around and place the hair space instead.

(At the end/beginning of a line, you leave out the succeeding/preceding space, of course. I hope Tₑχ/LᴬTᴇΧ will DTRT there…)

[iamed2@mastodon.social]

@mcc
Reading these results is wild to me

Is there any style guide that recommends putting any amount of spaces around an em dash?

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@cr1901 @mcc @ThomasWaldmann he erred, though… em dashes need hair spaces around. (Some american house styles have it without, which causes the line to bleed into the surrounding letters; I recently did a screenshot of an example at 12 pt, and there was less than a pixel between them; this is inacceptable.)

[wyatt@soc.megatokyo.moe]

@mirabilos @mcc any idea how to type hair spaces with a compose key?

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@wyatt @mcc get http://mbsd.evolvis.org/MirOS/dist/mir/Keyboard/.XCompose then Compose+-+-+/ gives you a hair space, and (except in older Gtk+ applications like Firefox in bullseye, but not in trixie), Compose+-+-+= gives you the whole precomposed (hah) sequence. (search for “hair” in the file)

save as ~/.XCompose fwiw

[wyatt@soc.megatokyo.moe]

@mirabilos @mcc so it's not something in xkb proper, that's too bad.
I'll try it. I forget if fcitx plays nice with xcompose though

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@wyatt @mcc you’ll need to update your compose sequences, yes. The toolkits all (nowadays) use that file; input methods… are a different thing and sometimes have hardcoded lists embedded in their binaries, which also often differ from the standard X composes (I think even older Gtk+ also did that).