this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
123 points (89.2% liked)

Asklemmy

44148 readers
1329 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Folks with vaginas, I'm conducting some family comparative analysis and I'd like to know how many standard pieces of toilet paper do you use when wiping after a pee. I posted some comments with options to upvote if you like.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How on earth did English typography get so weird with mdash, ndash, dash, hyphen, etcetera while most of the readers have no clue about the the differences. IMHO, just use dash.

Can you explain me how the different lengths of dash add to the understanding of the text, when I usually don't even see the difference on my mobile phone screen?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They have different meanings where the lengths help at a glance such as using en dash for a compound adjective or em dash for a longer pause for a clause. This aides in reading even if you only pick up on it subconsciously.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How was this handled in the age of typewriters?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Using multiple consecutive hyphens. Some schools used -- for em-dash, others


(still used today in latex), and then -- for en-dash.