I was just browsing the 'new' books on Project Gutenberg. I noticed an excellent book on punctuation and capitalization called "Hand-book of Punctuation with Instructions for Capitalization, Letter-writing, and Proof-reading". It is a little dated (published in 1878). I know that some things have changed in the years, like we write today rather than to-day. No distinction between the en dash and em dash.
A distinction is still made between em and em dashes in modern style guides: en-dash is now used only for separating the numbers in a range, as in "cook for 3-5 minutes." Em dashes are used in text.
Sorry, the book only told about "dash". I did not see anything about the en-dash or em-dash.
I did not see anything about the en-dash or em-dash.
I always thought the em-dash was called that because it was the width of an "m" and the en-dash because it was the width of an "n". Then I found this:
En and em dashes aren't called that because they're as wide as a lowercase "n" and a lowercase "m." They're called that because those are the specific typography jargon words that refer to the height of a physical piece of type (the "em," also called the "mutton" to reduce confusion) and half that height (the "en," also called the "nut"). An em dash was originally as wide as the font is tall. This is no longer fully true, as the modern ability to print without the need for mechanical type has reduced the limitations on what fonts can look like, and some fonts have drifted toward reflecting the widths of an "m" and an "n" in their em and en dashes.
I'm not getting this at all. I don't recall ever seeing a font where the lower case m and n are different heights. I know when I was trying to learn how to use a proportionally spaced typewriter, the teacher showed me how to measure and em (width of an uppercase M) and en (uppercase N) so I could understand the kerning better.
I don't recall ever seeing a font where the lower case m and n are different heights.
I didn't understand the height part. I just pasted what they said.
It's also probably way back in printing because they said, "This is no longer fully true, as the modern ability to print without the need for mechanical type has reduced the limitations on what fonts can look like."
I'm thinking I'd need to see a whole lot more references to using the height before I'd believe it, given that everything I've ever seen related it to the width of the capital letters. Yeah, we were still using mechanical type for the paper, though everything but the headlines was monospaced.
I think it's referring to placing the (typically lead cast) glyph pieces on a press plate. The piece containing the em-dash would be the largest possible size, a perfect square (while most letters would be narrower than they are tall). That's my comprehension of the snippet, in light of very vague prior knowledge.
It still doesn't fully explain why they refer to height as if it was directly connected or even interchangeable with width, but perhaps that make more sense knowing more technical details and professional jargon of those times print plates were assembled semi-manually from actual cast pieces.
It still doesn't fully explain why they refer to height as if it was directly connected or even interchangeable with width,
https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/em
The em square is the "box" that each glyph is sized relative to.
All the glyphs in a font are sized relative to a square, so height and width are the same (or it wouldn't be a square).
I didn't understand the height part. I just pasted what they said.
I found this: https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/em
An em is a unit of measurement, relative to the size of the font; therefore, in a typeface set at a font-size of 16px, one em is 16px.
The em square is the "box" that each glyph is sized relative to. So, at 12 points, the em square is 12 points wide. The boundary of the box typically sits slightly above the cap-height and slightly below the descender.
The em is by definition square, so the width of the em is controlled by the height of the font. Note: none of this is related to the letter M.
in a typeface set at a font-size of 16px, one em is 16px.
Yeah, but pixels is a new thing. That quote is referring to a time way before pixels or even fonts like we know them today.
By the way, every other reference to the em-dash says it's the width of the letter m and the en-dash is the width of the letter n. But since he used the terms "mutton" and "nut" I thought maybe he knew what he was talking about.
every other reference to the em-dash says it's the width of the letter m
Aha, just found another reference from practicaltypography.com that doesn't say that.
The em dash (—) is typically about as wide as a capital H. The en dash (–) is about half as wide.
Em and en refer to units of typographic measurement, not to the letters M and N. (Yes, the homophony is confusing. To disambiguate, loud print shops referred to them as mutton and nut.) In a traditional metal font, the em was the vertical distance from the top of a piece of type to the bottom. The en was half the size of the em. Originally, the width of the em and en dashes corresponded to these units. In today's digital fonts, they run narrower.
If you're interested in a more in-depth discussion of the history of typographic terminology, check out https://ilovetypography.com/2008/03/21/extreme-type-terminology/ (this is part 1 of a 5-part essay.
The third part of the link explains the em and en in far more detail:
The space between words is known as interword separation, interword spacing, word spacing or wordspacing, and can be described as loose, normal or tight. There are also specific blank spaces that relate to the size of the type. The em space, mutton or mutton quad is the width of a capital M, the en space, also known as half an em or a nut, is half that width.
In the days of metal type, the em space and en space were supplemented by even smaller spaces, such as the 3-em or 3-to-the-em space, a third of the width of an em space, the 4-em or midspace, one quarter of the width of an em space, and the 5-em space, or 5-to-the-em space, one fifth of the width of an em space. Nowadays, graphic designers tend to refer to the smaller spaces as, in order of their decreasing widths, a flush space, a thin space and the tiny hair space. Other spaces worth noting are the nonbreaking space, which refuses to be hyphenated, the figure space, the width of a monospaced number, and a punctuation space, the width of the simplest punctuation marks.
it's the width of the letter m
The french wikipedia says, one em is one cadratin, it's equal to the chasse of two numbers like
12
—
Obviously, modern typographic conventions seems to have shortened em-dash way bellow the cadratin.
What the quote is saying is that the em or mutton was a certain height and the en or nut was half that height. It's not saying that the letters M and N are different heights.
This confusion is why mutton and nut were common alternate terms. The original terms em and en were confusing because they drew comparisons to the letters, but they're just being used as short-hand for other measurements.
Sorry, the book only told about "dash". I did not see anything about the en-dash or em-dash.
Possibly because, especially back that far, the distinction between em and en dashes is a typesetting thing, not a writing thing.
I think it unlikely that writers in the 19th century would have been concerned about typesetting issues.
That sounds very likely. Writers wouldn't have bothered at least until the typewriter became common in the late 19th century, and likely not even then since most typewriters are monospaced so you have a hyphen, or sometimes two of them, to stand in for all three dashes.
called "Hand-book of Punctuation with Instructions for Capitalization, Letter-writing, and Proof-reading".
And, interestingly, two of those three words are now use d sans hyphen — 'handbook' and 'proofreading'. 'Letter-writing' still has the hyphen.
That's part of a trend in English to remove hyphens (along with all diacritical marks, even when rendering proper nouns from another language).