ara pehlivanian

Ever wonder what an em dash was for? Ever heard of an en dash? Did you know that they were quite different from the simple hyphen? Well, if you want to learn more, read this article entitled En Dashes and Em Dashes by Get It Write Online.

Update: According to: “The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)” (thanks Mathias) the correct numeric entities for em and en dashes are not — and – as stated in the above mentioned article, but — and – respectively.
I’ve also added this post to the Semantics category since using the correct character for the job (rather than using the hyphen key on your keyboard) is the semantically correct way of doing things. I’ve also filed it under a new category named Typography.