Reply to comment about "Kicking the em dash habit"

Note

Please consult the “Comments and interaction” section on the Canada.ca Terms and conditions page before adding your comment. The Language Portal of Canada reviews comments before they’re posted. We reserve the right to edit, refuse or remove any question or comment that violates these commenting guidelines.

By submitting a comment, you permanently waive your moral rights, which means that you give the Government of Canada permission to use, reproduce, edit and share your comment royalty-free, in whole or in part, in any manner it chooses. You also confirm that nothing in your comment infringes third party rights (for example, the use of a text from a third party without his or her permission).

Submitted by Randy Lyons on May 28, 2018, at 16:34

Interesting article. I have understood (maybe incorrectly) that the hyphen is used when the words are connected to create a single word. Example: Socio-economic. The em dash to connect or highlight two different words or phrases. Example 1 in the article. And the en dash when dates, numbers and nouns of equal value need to be joined.
However, given the examples in the article above, I would prefer the en dash over the em dash because the second part of the space between the words and the dash cause the reader to define the two parts of the sentence separately. The first part "Yogourt" or "yogurt" needs to be analysed and "which is right?" needs to be answered.