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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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