N-Dash or M-Dash?

[antonio107]

My thesis supervisor is a nitpicker. I love my parentheses and semi-colons, but he wants me using dashes to bookend discursive ideas and breaks in my prose. I started using N-dashes, only to have him change me again, saying that these are in fact always M dashes.

The Chicago style manual I’ve been consulting agrees with his liberal use of the M dash, but I can swear that I’ve seen breaks – like this one here – in books where an N dash was used in place of the M.

Any lexicography buffs care to chime in? Is there an English language consensus on the dash debate? Has it existed for all times?

[Raygun99]

For the paper I write for, we always use M-dashes in the way you describe. Online, I’m lazier and use N-dashes.

[CookingWithGas]

I would also side with the CMS. BTW dashes do not take spaces on either side as in your example.

This is a matter of style, not absolute correctness. But if you know what side your bread is buttered on you’ll comply with your advisor’s direction.

And when you’re done with your thesis, go back to doing whatever you want

[The_Second_Stone]

In life, there is the right way, the wrong way and the bosses’ way. In your case, the bosses’ way is also the right way, which helps because you should always do it the bosses’ way, even when it is wrong. I never understood the difference between n and m dashes, I just did it with m dashes. Now, looking at my keyboard, I can’t even find them.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

If you are in the academic world, isn’t the MLA style guide the ruling authority? No matter what, why don’t you just ask what style guide to use? You can’t use any arbitrary guide. They aren’t interchangeable.

And – of course and without any doubt – if a style guide says not to use spaces around a dash, take it out and burn it.

[antonio107]

@Exapno_Mapcase

If you are in the academic world, isn’t the MLA style guide the ruling authority? No matter what, why don’t you just ask what style guide to use? You can’t use any arbitrary guide. They aren’t interchangeable.

And – of course and without any doubt – if a style guide says not to use spaces around a dash, take it out and burn it.

MLA is the standard for English (edit: the Department, not the language) , I believe. I’m in music, and all of the humanities use Chicago/Turabian as their authoritative source. Why, I couldn’t tell you, but I’m told there are “good reasons” for it…

To clarify: there are spaces around an N dash – like this – but those apparently are only used for years and dates (i.e., Antonio107: 1986–2255). M-Dashes, however—like these bad boys—do not use a space at all.

[antonio107]

@The_Second_Stone

Now, looking at my keyboard, I can’t even find them.

MS-Office and Open Office both auto format it. Two hyphens and a space gives you an N-dash, while two hyphens, and the next word followed by a space will give you the M-dash.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@The_Second_Stone

In life, there is the right way, the wrong way and the bosses’ way. In your case, the bosses’ way is also the right way, which helps because you should always do it the bosses’ way, even when it is wrong. I never understood the difference between n and m dashes, I just did it with m dashes. Now, looking at my keyboard, I can’t even find them.

En-dashes and em-dashes (there are no such things as N and M dashes) are typesetting terms. They never appeared on typewriter keyboards. They were used to make the justified columns come out properly in books, and so weren’t a concern for manuscripts. One job editors used to have was to go through a ms and mark up hyphens to dashes. No ordinary human should ever have to know which is which and when they are used.

Word processing programs will convert hyphens to dashes – usually two hyphens followed by a space is autoconverted to a em-dash in Word – but you can insert either.

Here’s one comment on when to use an en-dash. Remember, this is only one possible style rule. The other useful everyday rule for en-dashes is – never.

here are the two basic uses of en dashes:

1. To show numerical ranges, signifying “up to and including”—of dates, ages, pages, etc. (Example: “I read pages 7–22 last night.”)
2. The storied “compound adjective hyphen,” an event so rare in the English language that proofreaders shiver with excitement whenever they come across it. Basically “pro-American” gets a regular hyphen because “American” is only one word, whereas “pro–Falkland Islands” gets an en dash because “Falkland Islands” is two words. So, too phrases like “Civil War–era.”

[robby]

@antonio107

My thesis supervisor is a nitpicker. I love my parentheses and semi-colons, but he wants me using dashes to bookend discursive ideas and breaks in my prose. I started using N-dashes, only to have him change me again, saying that these are in fact always M dashes.

The Chicago style manual I’ve been consulting agrees with his liberal use of the M dash, but I can swear that I’ve seen breaks – like this one here – in books where an N dash was used in place of the M.

Any lexicography buffs care to chime in? Is there an English language consensus on the dash debate? Has it existed for all times?

I’m a nitpicker, too. I’ve always seen the two types of dashes referred to as “En-dashes” and “Em-dashes.”

En-dashes are smaller than Em-dashes, and hyphens are smaller than En-dashes.

Hyphens are used in hyphenated words (e.g. a man-eating shark). En-dashes are used to indicate a range (e.g. there are 200–300 people in a crowd). Em-dashes are used to break a thought in a sentence—like this.

[CookingWithGas]

@Exapno_Mapcase

And – of course and without any doubt – if a style guide says not to use spaces around a dash, take it out and burn it.

CSM, for example, doesn’t explicitly forbid it but there are no spaces in any of its examples. I don’t have the AP Style Guide but I believe it says to use two hyphens with a space on either side (well, not a space on either side, a space on each side ;)). I also believe it is somewhat unusual in that regard, and that usage may be peculiar to the traditional needs of mews articles transmitted by wire.

[brujaja]

Thank you, Exapno Mapcase. Succinctly put.

I have always been a little fuzzy on the dash vs. hyphen thing.

[njtt]

@antonio107

My thesis supervisor is a nitpicker. I love my parentheses and semi-colons, but he wants me using dashes to bookend discursive ideas and breaks in my prose.

I am pretty sure most punctuation mavens deprecate overuse of the dash, and recommend using bracketing commas or parentheses as far as possible, but as other posters have said, for the purposes of your thesis, what your supervisor says goes.

@Exapno_Mapcase

If you are in the academic world, isn’t the MLA style guide the ruling authority?

That will depend on the discipline. APA style is also used in several disciplines (not just psychology), and there will be others in other fields.

Here is an extensive, but inconclusive, discussion of proper dash forms.

@Exapno_Mapcase

And – of course and without any doubt – if a style guide says not to use spaces around a dash, take it out and burn it.

I am 100% with you on that! My own, quite strong, preference (for bracketing dashes) is for en-dashes with spaces around them (or, if I must, hyphens or em-dashes with spaces). But, of course, the OP must still follow the bosses orders and whatever style guide (if any) is in force.

(I might add that, when I wrote my own thesis, I was given total freedom – or, from the alternative perspective, no guidance whatsoever – in these sorts of matters. This did lead to what I now recognize as some odd and (trivially) unfortunate results, but it did mean that I was forced to think about these sorts of “style” issues, too.)

[antonio107]

@robby

I’m a nitpicker, too. I’ve always seen the two types of dashes referred to as “En-dashes” and “Em-dashes.”

Meh, I’ve done enough work in Medieval Manuscripts and illuminated texts that I don’t believe in the “correct way” of spelling anything.

It’s ironic then, that I’m getting all worked up over dashes, lol…

Thanks to all of you for your input!

[njtt]

@antonio107

I’m in music, and all of the humanities use Chicago/Turabian as their authoritative source. Why, I couldn’t tell you, but I’m told there are “good reasons” for it.

I can tell you the reason. The first time the issue of a field ever really came up, someone arbitrarily made this choice (or perhaps it was because someone else had arbitrarily made the choice for an earlier, influential work in the field).

Incidentally, although it may be true for Music, I very much doubt that “all the humanities” (apart from English) use Chicago/Turabian (which, anyway, I believe are not quite the same thing). I am pretty sure that Exapno is right to think that MLA is used quite widely, and there are probably other preferences in other fields. Come to that, specific journal, and specific publishers, will often have their own idiosyncratic style rules.

[Gary_Robson]

I’ve worked in a wide variety of editing and typesetting situations, and while I use em-dashes on a regular basis, I’ve probably used en-dashes twice. Ever.

And I’ve never seen anyone in the business write M-dash. An “em” is a unit of length. An em-dash is one em wide. An en dash is 1/2 em wide. The letter M is not necessarily one em wide, nor is the letter N half an em wide, so the terms wouldn’t be accurate anyway.

[suranyi]

@Exapno_Mapcase

En-dashes and em-dashes (there are no such things as N and M dashes) are typesetting terms. They never appeared on typewriter keyboards. They were used to make the justified columns come out properly in books, and so weren’t a concern for manuscripts. One job editors used to have was to go through a ms and mark up hyphens to dashes. No ordinary human should ever have to know which is which and when they are used.

Word processing programs will convert hyphens to dashes – usually two hyphens followed by a space is autoconverted to a em-dash in Word – but you can insert either.

Here’s one comment on when to use an en-dash. Remember, this is only one possible style rule. The other useful everyday rule for en-dashes is – never.

I think en-dashes are usually used within a telephone number, too.

[Alan_Smithee]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that American style tends to dictate an em-dash with no spaces where British tends to dictate an en-dash with spaces either side. I used to use em-dashes extensively, but since reading that, I’ve decided that the British style works better using a hyphen (where dashes are unavailable - e.g., on the SDMB) than replacing an em-dash with two hyphens–which looks like too much of a kludge, IMO.

BTW, I’ve wanted for a long time to pit people, especially people on the SDMB, where you’d think they’d be called out on it, who use unspaced hyphens instead of a dash-it makes things very hard to read.

[pulykamell]

@suranyi

I think en-dashes are usually used within a telephone number, too.

I’ve never heard that. I’ve only known hyphens or figure dashes to be used in telephone numbers. Personally, the only time I ever use en-dashes somewhat religiously is to indicate ranges. I ignore the compound adjective hyphen.

[Keeve]

@robby

Hyphens are used in hyphenated words (e.g. a man-eating shark). En-dashes are used to indicate a range (e.g. there are 200–300 people in a crowd). Em-dashes are used to break a thought in a sentence—like this.

I do realize that a lot of this stuff is based on convention, not logic. And for that reason, there might not be a factual answer for what I’m going to ask. But I’m going to ask it anyway, just in case someone can help me to understand…

robby’s examples make a lot of sense to me, because it seems logical for the narrow hyphen or en-dash to connect things, while the wide em-dash would be used to separate things. But for that very reason, I think there ought to be spaces on both sides of the em-dash. I’ll grant you that the em-dash is wide, but still, when I see it, it comes across as being a joiner than a separator, and I find that jarring. (Maybe I just don’t realize that it is wide, and other people do.)

Okay, here’s an objective observation which may clarify things:

It seems to me that every punctuation mark in English requires empty space (or another punctuation mark) on at least one side, and these hyphens and dashes are the only possible exceptions. For example, a comma always has a blank space after it. So do the period (full stop) and question mark, unless they are at the end of a paragraph, which counts as blank space for this purpose. An open-quote will always have a blank space before it, while a close-quote might possibly have text before it and some punctuation after it.

The only exceptions I can think of are the hyphen and en-dash; since they are connectors, it makes sense to me that there are no spaces on either side. All other punctuation (besides the hyphen and en-dash) serve to tell the reader to pause in some fashion, and so they also have a space somewhere. But the em-dash also tells the reader to pause—so why do some people object to the spaces?

(Please be honest. When you look at what I wrote in the last line there, does it look like “pause” and “so” are joined, or does it look like you’re supposed to pause between them?)

(Hey! I just realized there’s another punctuation mark which has no spaces around it: an apostrophe, when used in a contraction, like “you’re” or “there’s”. That’s because it is a connector. When an apostrophe is used in a possessive, like “America’s”, I’ll grant that it is not connecting words in quite the same way as in a contraction, but it sure as heck isn’t a separator like the em-dash!)

[antonio107]

@njtt

I can tell you the reason. The first time the issue of a field ever really came up, someone arbitrarily made this choice (or perhaps it was because someone else had arbitrarily made the choice for an earlier, influential work in the field).

Incidentally, although it may be true for Music, I very much doubt that “all the humanities” (apart from English) use Chicago/Turabian (which, anyway, I believe are not quite the same thing). I am pretty sure that Exapno is right to think that MLA is used quite widely, and there are probably other preferences in other fields. Come to that, specific journal, and specific publishers, will often have their own idiosyncratic style rules.

I’ve used it in History and classics courses, as well. But yes, I suspect that MLA is becoming more and more common place. I learned one way, and I’ll only change if there’s publication involved.

And no, they aren’t the same thing. But the Chicago manual of style was written by Kate Turabian, so they are definitely related.