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.