this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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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.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (3 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 1 month ago (2 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 1 month ago (1 children)

How was this handled in the age of typewriters?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

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


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