Em-dash vs. Horizontal Bar.

[swestrup]

Since I've started thinking about writing, I've been noticing things while I've been reading lately that I never noticed before. One of them has to do with the use of dashes.

I was taught that the em-dash (—) was used in two ways, to emphasize a parenthetical comment — like this one — or to break off a sentence like in the following dialogue:

"Where are you going?"
"I was just—"
"Oh, no you aren't! You have work to do!"

However, yesterday I was reading a (british typeset) book where the second type of dash was signifigantly longer than an em-dash. My best guess is that it was what the typsetters call the Horizontal Bar or U+2015 (―), which on my browser is the same length of an em-dash but is usually represented in ASCII as three hyphens (---) while an em-dash is usually two (--).

So, was this a strange typesetting fluke, a difference between British and North American usage, or is there some other explanation of which I am unaware?

Comments

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

I've only ever used that particular dash when writing dialogue similar to the one you described... and in a narrative indicating a thought which trails off.


tra la la la la

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

RE: Typesetting

Is it digital, or analogue?


:) N

[swestrup]

It was a hard-bound library book, so I guess that makes it analog.

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

Can that account for the difference, do you think?


:) N

[swestrup]

Uh, I don't see how. The book used two different symbols for what I was taught were two uses for a single symbol. I was trying to figure out why.

[sps.livejournal.com]

The em dash and the quotation dash are definitely distinct punctuation marks. You typically see U+2015 HORIZONTAL BAR = QUOTATION DASH used in the (quasi-)French style, something like this:

She strode up and demanded, "where are you going?
---To get something to drink!
---Oh, no you don't! You have work to do!"

(typical French punctuation using guillemets and different spacing around punctuation, of course). But I think it is also appropriate - and traditional - in your context, yes.

The Unicode standard (at http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html, chart U2000.pdf) has this to say about dashes:

2010 HYPHEN -> 002D hyphen-minus -> 00AD soft hyphen
2011 NON-BREAKING HYPHEN -> 002D hyphen-minus -> 00AD soft hyphen ~ <noBreak> 2010
2012 FIGURE DASH
2013 EN DASH
2014 EM DASH * may be used in pairs to offset parenthetical text -> 30FC katakana-hiragana prolonged sound mark
2015 HORIZONTAL BAR = QUOTATION DASH * long dash introducing quoted text

(Elsewhere, I think in the introductory text for the section, it notes that the relevance of 2012 is that it is the same *width* as a figure and so is useful in tabular matter.)

[arymede.livejournal.com]

Not that it applies any, but Japanese tests use an extremely long em-dash like what you've mentioned. I've noticed it used to break out of the dialogue to interrupt oneself with a parenthetical comment.