On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 10:02:40PM +0200, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
On 6/25/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 08:47:37PM +0200, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
<snob type=typography> Em dashes are properly set in English text without spacing on either side, though the ASCIIography of this usage is much less picky.
Can you provide a reference for this? Also can you be sure this is the only style and that it doesn't vary by style guide, by publisher, by country, by newspaper vs novels, etc.
A formal reference?
No; not off hand.
Just personal experience from 35 years or so of reading American typesetting, and at least 15 years of paying professional attention thereto.
I ask for a reference because I've seen people say that serial commas (also known as Harvard commas or Oxford commas) are correct or incorrect whereas in that case it does turn out to depend on region, publisher, etc. but people wrongly assume there is a global rule.
Serial commas are historically more "proper", but that has been lost with time. I prefer them due to greater precision and communication of intended meaning (particularly in cases where a series may contain sub-series), and because they tend to better represent the conceptual flow of the sentence as well as the verbal flow when it is pronounced aloud. In other words, use of serial commans enhances clarity.