I’ve been working on improving my writing and since it’s an important skill in our industry I figured it’s also a category of learnings worth sharing.
I’ve been experimenting with using em dashes (—) lately but I just learned that it’s common to not put spaces around it.
Spacing around an em dash varies. Most newspapers insert a space before and after the dash, and many popular magazines do the same, but most books and journals omit spacing, closing whatever comes before and after the em dash right up next to it.
I personally think I’ll prefer adding spaces — at least in my own writing — since it looks more distinct from a hyphenated word. I also saw it mentioned somewhere that some software incorrectly teats it as a hyphenated word when double clicking or press and holding for selection. This also makes me realized I may have written some word-counting logic incorrectly in the past 😅
How to Use Em Dashes (—), En Dashes (–) , and Hyphens (-) | Merriam-Webster