Interesting observation about the em dash. I never thought about it that hard, but reddit’s text editor (as well as Lemmy’s, at least on the default UI) automatically concatenate a double dash into an en dash, rather than an em dash.
I use em dashes (well, en dashes, as above) in my writing all the time, because I am a nerd.
For anyone who cares, an en dash is the same width as an N in typical typography, and looks like this: –
An em dash is, to no one’s surprise, the same with as an M. It looks like this: —
(For what it’s worth, Lemmy does not concatenate a triple dash into an em dash. It turns it into a horizontal rule instead.)
That’s probably because the posts are stored as plain text, and any markdown within them is just rendered at display time. This is presumably also how you can view any post or comment’s original source. So, here you go:
Double –
En – (alt 0150)
Em — (alt 0151)
And for good measure, a triple:
Actually, I notice if you include a triple that’s not on a line by itself it does render it as an em dash rather than en, like so: —
You’re right, it means you don’t have to save two versions or somehow convert it back into a source format instead.
The triple renders as a line below on mbin. I don’t remember what they’re called.
I use the poor man’s emdash (two hyphens in a row) here and there as well. I guess I never noticed Reddit auto-formats them. I have been accused of being an AI on a few occasions. I guess this is a contributing factor to why that is.
Funny how Reddit technically formats it into the wrong glyph, though. Not like anyone but the most insufferable of pedants would notice and care, of course. I find it merely mildly amusing.
Interesting observation about the em dash. I never thought about it that hard, but reddit’s text editor (as well as Lemmy’s, at least on the default UI) automatically concatenate a double dash into an en dash, rather than an em dash.
I use em dashes (well, en dashes, as above) in my writing all the time, because I am a nerd.
For anyone who cares, an en dash is the same width as an N in typical typography, and looks like this: –
An em dash is, to no one’s surprise, the same with as an M. It looks like this: —
(For what it’s worth, Lemmy does not concatenate a triple dash into an em dash. It turns it into a horizontal rule instead.)
Huh, ms word does that as well.
Does not look like your Lemmy editor is converting them, but Lemmy’s frontend itself, because on mbin I just see two regular dashes. Kind of a weird implementation.
That’s probably because the posts are stored as plain text, and any markdown within them is just rendered at display time. This is presumably also how you can view any post or comment’s original source. So, here you go:
Double –
En – (alt 0150)
Em — (alt 0151)
And for good measure, a triple:
Actually, I notice if you include a triple that’s not on a line by itself it does render it as an em dash rather than en, like so: —
You’re right, it means you don’t have to save two versions or somehow convert it back into a source format instead. The triple renders as a line below on mbin. I don’t remember what they’re called.
That’s a horizontal rule.
Refreshingly, the frontend just converts it to a plain old HTML <hr> tag and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, either.
I use the poor man’s emdash (two hyphens in a row) here and there as well. I guess I never noticed Reddit auto-formats them. I have been accused of being an AI on a few occasions. I guess this is a contributing factor to why that is.
Funny how Reddit technically formats it into the wrong glyph, though. Not like anyone but the most insufferable of pedants would notice and care, of course. I find it merely mildly amusing.