"American style manuals insist that dashes within sentences be as long as the point size of the text (one em), with no space fore and aft. Em dashes, like double spaces after a period, are a regrettable souvenir of Victorian typesetting, when compositors, who were paid by the line, liked to puff up their text as much as possible, textual integrity be damned. McSweeney’s goes the Victorians one better by using em dashes with spaces on either side, carving canyons between phrases."
- Dean Allen
@wion I *like* double spaces after periods, and I agree with McSweeney's that punctuation between distinct words should have spaces. The transition from one phrase to the next deserves sign-posting.
It's not as if we're running out of space in the age of the infinite scroll.
@mpjgregoire
I should have mentioned that the quote from Dean was from 2002, I think, and he's referring to McSweeney's V. I've not really looked at their style guide, if they even have one public, but one of those things would dictate what gets done in any given house. There are personal preferences (we all have them) and there is what the editor tells you to do, or fixes for you. ;)
@demonkind
@wrenpile