![]() ![]() Lot of other units have latin roots as well. So maybe the use of em and en is based on this kind of classical lingua franca trend, the first movable types and obviously are a good reference point as well. For example, the first printers would use 2x V to create a W and that type only came in use later as the need to translate texts in other languages came and the popularity of mechanical printing grew. ![]() Apparently, the first texts printed were latin, that's why some types were not available (That's still a point debated today). The en and em come from the old latin while V and W (another pair of easy "doubling" letters) were not both used at the time when the first types were created (eg. The character is called an em dash because it is 1 em wide,Ī length that varies depending on the font size.Īs for why the M and N where selected as models for these units, that's probably just a matter of circumstances and naming convention. The em dash, m dash, m-rule, or "mutton" (-) is longer than an enĭash. the en dash, with its 1-en width, is in most fonts either a half-em wide or the width of an "n". The en dash, n dash, n-rule, or "nut" (–) is traditionally half What Is an En Dash Used For This handy little dash is mostly reserved for expressing number ranges or connected words. They simply are named this way because of the unit used to measure their width, as it is for the famous "one inch punch" for example! For more details please refer to the Wikipedia article.Įdit II: Perhaps em – as a typographic unit – literally refers to the letter M and is therefore called "em" in order to avoid confusion between other unit symbols like a m (meter).Īdditionally to the other answers, Wikipedia seems to answer this under the " dash" entry. En Dash (-): An en dash is longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash. Today the is adopted for common sizes of spaces – an em quad for example is a space that is one em wide. A Geviert (in English quad) was a metal spacer used in letterpress typesetting. Primarily based in East Coast, USA specialized in remote work. ![]() With our learning-first mindset, we are constantly exploring, experimenting, and creating. Now the question is what means em and en in typographic context really and what are the origins of these terms?Įdit I: In German the terms " Geviertstrich" and " Halbgeviertstrich" are used instead of the terms em and en dash. Mission: Improve the humansoftware relationship by creating interactions where software is enabling, facilitating, and augmenting our human experiences. Em and en refer to units of typographic measurement, not to the letters M or N. The em dash is typically about as wide as a capital H, the en dash is about half as wide. Where the terms en and em are so called typographic units which are equal to or the half of the currently specified point size.īoth dashes are named for the length of a typeface’s lower-case n and upper-case M respectively em dash "-" (Unicode character U+2014 and HTML symbol -).en dash "–" (Unicode character U+2013 and HTML symbol –) as well as the. ![]() It seems to be the longest of all the dashes.As you know one of the most common versions of the dash in typography are the Oh there is also something called a "horizontal bar", which apparently is used for dialogue sometimes instead of quotes. But make sure you are nice to her-she has a very bad temper. You can call the moon if you like on 9877-567-765. The moon has one other goal in life besides orbiting the earth-to infect you with daemons. It is a little-know fact-ignored by all my friends anyway-that the moon has special powers. There are Unicode characters for both en dash and figure dash, but they seem to do the same thing?Īnyway, back to my solution here is an example of how I might write: You will find this material in chapters 812. Depending on the context, the en dash is read as to or through. There should be no space between the en dash and the adjacent material. (3 hyphen/minus)Īs far as I know also, a figure dash and a en dash have the same purpose - to represent a range of values like "June-July". The en dash is used to represent a span or range of numbers, dates, or time. As far as I know, this is all most keyboards support? So my solution is this:įor a hyphen and figure dash I use '-' (1 hyphen/minus)įor an en dash I use '-' (2 hyphen/minus)įor an em dash I use '-'. Basically it only supports the hyphen/minus sign "-". My font doesn't support all the different kinds of dashes - en dashes, em dashes, figure dashes, hyphens etc. ![]()
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