Do you Know Your Dashes?
Show notes
If you like the finer details of grammar and punctuation, then you're gonna love this episode.
We geek out on the subtle, but incredibly important and occasionally crucial differences between three little horizontal lines: the hyphen - the En Dash – and the Em Dash —
Jono explains hyphens for line breaks and compound terms, how usage can evolve into single words (e.g., wildlife, wellbeing), and why hyphen placement can change meaning (e.g., five-dollar bills). The en dash is described as linking ranges and relationships (pages, dates, times, scores, routes, debates, partnerships, negotiations), with notes on how to type it. The em dash is framed as a stronger-than-comma interruption for added thoughts, with style cautions and typing methods. They discuss underscore origins from typewriters, punctuation differences across countries, and how AI popularized em dashes as a telltale sign of machine-written text.
Most importantly though, we discuss why this matters and that if used correctly, they can help avoid misunderstandings.
Episode Summary
00:00 Welcome to Sketchplanations
00:40 What Are Dashes
03:09 Hyphen Basics
04:32 Hyphenated Words
05:35 Language Evolves
07:00 Hyphen Pitfalls
07:31 Tom on Hyphens
10:38 Meet the En Dash
11:41 Typing En Dashes
12:32 En Dash Use Cases
14:47 Spacing and Style
15:30 Introducing Em Dash
15:33 Em Dash Basics
16:15 Style Guide Rules
18:08 Brackets vs Speech
18:57 Where Names Come From
20:32 Underscore Origins
22:05 Reading Dashes Aloud
24:39 Does It Matter
26:04 Oxford Comma Stakes
28:36 AI Em Dash Tell
29:59 Typing Em Dashes
30:32 Punctuation By Country
31:41 Morse Code And Minus
32:43 Final Sign Off
External Link
There's only one link this week:
- Jono referenced the book Strunk and White : The Elements of Style
All music on this podcast is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.
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