Do you like the term "em dash"?

For some reason ─ I don't know why ─ it delights me :)

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Em and en dashes are a relic of printing days, originally when set my hand but the later linotype machines had the option. Em and en are width measurements in moveable type and so were important to know when writing headlines because some letters such as m and w are wider than your average letter like an n, but then there are those that narrower like i and j. And yes, I am old enough to have set type by hand.

ServantOfTheGoddess · 61-69, M

@dancingtongue What was the situation where you were setting type by hand? Did you work for a newspaper?

dancingtongue · 80-89, M

@ServantOfTheGoddess High school print shop. Yes, high schools still had vocational training and printing was one of the options at mine. I didn't take printing, but I did take journalism and was on the high school newspaper (as well as working part time for two local weeklies covering high school sports) and dabbled a bit in the print shop during lunch hours and after school. While none of my aunt's weekly newspapers -- she serially owned or ran them literally the length of California from Weed on the Oregon border to El Centro on the Mexican border -- were ever close enough for me to gain any experience, all of her sons became printers so I was exposed to their experiences as well. But I worked on the journalism side, writing and editing including page make-up and headline writing which requires a working understanding of such things as fonts, picas, ems and ens, because the computer was doing the sizing for you because the computer didn't exist yet.

ServantOfTheGoddess · 61-69, M

@dancingtongue that is so interesting. Thank you.