Annoyed by two-hyphen em dash replaced by hyphen in my published story

I don't know if it was human or machine, but my two-hyphen em dash "spelling"--like this--in a story I submitted came out replaced by single hyphens. It messes up the readability of the story and makes me look like a rube.

For example, an original sentence (hypothetical, just to be clear
The cock went into her mouth--she hadn't brushed her teeth today--and she giggled.

Converts to:
The cock went into her mouth-she hadn't brushed her teeth today-and she giggled.

which reads poorly.

I see my mistake now which is I should have pasted in the actual em dash character—this one, which is hard to find—instead of the two-hyphen shortcut. So I will do that in the future.

I'm still annoyed what I thought was standard convention—two hyphens for em dash—was overwritten by a single hyphen. Is there any way that I can get it fixed? The publishing process at Literotica seems rather black box.

For context, you can read about em dash vs hyphen etc with a google search.

from one site:
>Remember, em dashes are not interchangeable with hyphens. Using a single hyphen instead of an em dash can confuse readers and make your writing look unprofessional. If you’re writing text in a program or on a website where the em dash character is completely unavailable, use two hyphens together (–) to signify an em dash.

ChrisEva said:

I'm still annoyed what I thought was standard convention—

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Never heard of it, but I can think of a lot more important things to be annoyed about.

You can submit an edited story by following the instructions in this FAQ; either insert the em-dashes yourself or use the "Notes" field to request that -- be left as-is.

However, it's probably not worth the effort. Stories generally get a flood of readers in the first week while they're on the New Stories page, and then that dies down to a trickle. By the time your edit goes through, readership will have dropped off a lot. Might be better just to concentrate on the next one instead.

ChrisEva said:

I'm still annoyed what I thought was standard convention—two hyphens for em dash—was overwritten by a single hyphen. Is there any way that I can get it fixed? The publishing process at Literotica seems rather black box.

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Is it just me, but lack of spaces around the em dash hurts my eyes badly. Then, I'm non-English and don't know maybe there is some weird convention, but it looks just very wrong for me.

And, I believe it could be relevant in this case. Because, double hyphen without spaces around looks just like typo anyway, and I wouldn't be surprised at all there's an automated or semi automatic process to catch that (they do search and replace for curvy quotes and reverse apostrophes as far I know; the same script may do more). Besides, even single hyphen - surrounded by spaces - I would read as em dash more readily than the em—dash without spaces.

So I believe the true problem here is the lack of spaces.

LupusDei said:

Is it just me, but lack of spaces around the em dash hurts my eyes badly. Then, I'm non-English and don't know maybe there is some weird convention, but it looks just very wrong for me.

And, I believe it could be relevant in this case. Because, double hyphen without spaces around looks just like typo anyway, and I wouldn't be surprised at all there's an automated or semi automatic process to catch that (they do search and replace for curvy quotes and reverse apostrophes as far I know; the same script may do more). Besides, even single hyphen - surrounded by spaces - I would read as em dash more readily than the em—dash without spaces.

So I believe the true problem here is the lack of spaces.

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Em dashes are typically used without spaces, except in some newspapers & AP Stylebook.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/em-dash-space
https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

It's more a case of American usage (m-dash) vs non American usage (hyphen) and what you're most used to, I reckon. Lit seems to default to hyphen, I think - not that I ever bother with the differences, as I've always used the hyphen (living and educated in Oz).
-- just looks really odd to me, and why faff about with the extra key strokes? It's different publishing standards, is all.

Many word processors will automatically convert double (or triple, since double hyphens often become an en dash) hyphens to em dashes and if they don't you can set it up to replace them while you type (using U+2014 in Unicode or 8212 in decimal). Otherwise you can find and replace all double hyphens before you submit.

Alice_Rosaleen said:

Many word processors will automatically convert double (or triple, since double hyphens often become an en dash) hyphens to em dashes and if they don't you can set it up to replace them while you type (using U+2014 in Unicode or 8212 in decimal). Otherwise you can find and replace all double hyphens before you submit.

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This. I use Word, which automatically converts a double en dash (two hyphens) to an em dash. However, I think it depends on how you submit too. I copy and paste my stories into the text box, then add the html for italics; this keeps the em dashes in place. I’ve noticed sometimes if I upload a doc they don’t always translate and become two en dashes.

If it bugs you (and it would bug me too), then submit an edited version following the guidelines. Keep in mind though that it takes a while for the edited version to become live; my last one took almost a month.

Thanks, everybody. That all makes sense. (Esp. bramble for the edit tip)

The American vs. non-American conventions explain it, I guess, although I had no idea that American exceptionalism extended to the little old em dash . I found this saying surrounding spaces are recommend in the UK, but that just looks wrong to me: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/hyphenanddash/dash. It's always hard to get away from the religion one was raised with, isn't it?

I still think replacing double-hypen with a single hypen is just wrong, though. Double-hyphen (with no surrounding spaces) in the US is standard convention for an em dash.

I didn't check character-by-character but I hope there aren't other automated or manual changes to the text upon publishing. I want my works to stay as I wrote them.

BTW, for those not convinced of the value of a dash, this is a good evangelism: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/when-to-use-and-not-use-an-em-dash

I should add that you can use the em dash entity &#8212 or &mdash in html.

Bramblethorn said:

Em dashes are typically used without spaces, except in some newspapers & AP Stylebook.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/em-dash-space
https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

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That's something new and very surprising for me indeed.

Then, the dash I'm familiar with in my native language is literally called "thought mark," and it's something more alike a silent word: forced pause that don't interrupt the flow of the sentence, not used to take a breath, unlike coma.

Also, in my language
"This and something"
"This — and something"
"This, — and something"
"This —, and something"
are all legal and different sentences I used to have heated discussions with my grammar teacher about (altough frankly, the difference between the last two may be more poetics and philosophy than grammar).

So yes, probably I'm confusing the em dash with something else entirely. Still I can't wrap my mind around not using spaces, it just looks ugly and doesn't make sense to me, except the sudden interuptuion: "I'm about to say something—," but never did.

Tell Laurel

I'm pretty sure Laurel has a preprocessor or macro she runs against submissions, or as part of the posting preparation step.

I'd even speculate there is already a check in that code for two adjacent hyphens, since they seem to get replaced by something (just like open/close quotes get replaced by straight quotes).

This suggests a bug.

Maybe she's already turning a double hyphen into an em-dash, and the character she chose (code point) is getting converted a second time downstream from "this should display as an em-dash" into "weird dash like character suppress by replacement with a hyphen".

So send her a message with details on your submission so she can reproduce the problem.

Alt+0151

The em dash is a nightmare for data management. I don’t know what Literotica uses for a Content Managment System, but the em dash is a special character that can royally fuck up a database.

The fact that Literotica’s CMS recognizes the deadly em dash in your subsmission and converts it to a safe double hyphen speaks of considerate technical sophistication. On many sites like this, your em dash would have been replaced with something like "¿ö” or some other gobbledygoop.

LupusDei said:

Then, the dash I'm familiar with in my native language is literally called "thought mark,"

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Gondolatjel? And the em-dash, nagykötőjel?

ReadyOne said:

I'm pretty sure Laurel has a preprocessor or macro she runs against submissions, or as part of the posting preparation step.

I'd even speculate there is already a check in that code for two adjacent hyphens, since they seem to get replaced by something (just like open/close quotes get replaced by straight quotes).

This suggests a bug.

Maybe she's already turning a double hyphen into an em-dash, and the character she chose (code point) is getting converted a second time downstream from "this should display as an em-dash" into "weird dash like character suppress by replacement with a hyphen".

So send her a message with details on your submission so she can reproduce the problem.

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I may have gotten your problem backwards. You submitted a true em-dash, and it got converted to a single hyphen.

Still sound like a "bug".

Em-dash should have been translated to a double hyphen by the preprocessor, not a single hyphen, if her intention was to remove em-dashes for whatever reason. Perhaps all she needs to do is change the preprocessor to make it "—".


Again, contact her so she knows what's happening. The odds of her reading this thread are very, very slim.

ReadyOne said:

I may have gotten your problem backwards. You submitted a true em-dash, and it got converted to a single hyphen.

Still sound like a "bug".

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Based on the FAQ, it’s a “feature.”

8. If you have specialty formatting requests, such as the need for bolds or italics in certain parts, PLEASE LET US KNOW in a note at the top of the story. Otherwise, all special formatting will be stripped from the stories before posting.

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Since Lit accepts .doc and .rtf, the CMS must strip out all sorts of hidden characters, formatting commands, and my guess, Extended ASCII characters, of which the em dash is one.

I provide real em dashes in my story text and cut and paste into the submissions box. They show in the posted story as real em dashes.

Two dashes for an em dash hasn't been standard for over thirty years, since the computer replaced the typewriter, which didn't have a real em dash.

Oblimo said:

Gondolatjel? And the em-dash, nagykötőjel?

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Domuzīme.

LupusDei said:

Domuzīme.

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Latvija?

Forgive me, I’m very poorly travelled. The only person I ever knew who spoke Latvian was my grandfather, who was born and raised probably in Prūsija (rather than admit his father led a clan of wandering horse rustlers, my grandfather claimed that WWII changed the maps so much he wasn’t sure what country he grew up in ), and made his fortune trading in furs and pelts all around the Baltic states.

So what is Latvian erotica like?

Oblimo said:

Latvija?

Forgive me, I’m very poorly travelled.

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Yes! And no problem, Latvian is somewhat obscure language spoken by at most two million people.

Oblimo said:

The only person I ever knew who spoke Latvian was my grandfather, who was born and raised probably in Prūsija (rather than admit his father led a clan of wandering horse rustlers, my grandfather claimed that WWII changed the maps so much he wasn’t sure what country he grew up in ), and made his fortune trading in furs and pelts all around the Baltic states.

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He might very well be right. Since Old Prussians -- Prūši, a Baltic tribe -- were exterminated in brutal war in late twelfth, early thirteenth century, that land has no lawful owner and goes as spoils of war to the whims of the latest winner. Borders were redrawn routinely between Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Russia. We here in the region still see Königberg as occupied, although there's no one to really claim it back either.

Oblimo said:

So what is Latvian erotica like?

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Rather tame, as far I'm aware of.

Sexually charged comedy is easy and popular, and there way lower inhibitions around nudity and dirty talk, but beyond that the predominant norms are very traditional.

There certainly is national colouring, as we are weird folks that believe one can comfortably belong to more than one religion in practice: good 70% identify as Christians (predominantly Lutheran) but about as much will admit to honour national tradition, pagan rituals, some might say. Unlike some places there's little merging or mixing (although we invented the Christmas three, and our current Lutheran archbishop openly admit he is disappointed in and despondent about organised religion), but rather protected by a well cultivated intentional backwaterness. And that I seen this as required aside should be telling.

There a lot less taboo about nudity, especially nudity deemed functional in certain settings, at least partially dictated by sauna culture. My grandfather kept claiming swimsuits were invented by communists, just to screw with the natural laws of the world. At the same time he rejected a date for seeing her working nude at the roadside garden, judging her insane (and choosing my grandmother instead, a well learned witch). Sure, that was "before the war" but the long now here spans thousand years.

Historically dictated we're still masters at layers of implied meanings, between the lines speaking and double entendre. I knew (had to work with) a very talented marketing specialist, ethnic Russian, who claimed there is impossible to say anything in Latvian and not to speak about sex, and then he masterfully demonstrated what he had in mind, for gut wrenching guffaws of the public, despite his weakly concealed intended was to humiliate, of course.

The text processor does some strange things with em dashes, depending upon what program they're pasted from.

If you're working with virtually any version of Microsoft Word, you should be good. I assume that's what the text processor is based upon.

If it's any other program, and you have issues with unexpected characters where you should have em dashes, there's one certain way to override the logic the processor uses — the ASCII special character code.

Once you're ready to submit, do a find/replace, and in place of every em dash, use the following code:

—

The ampersand and semicolon are both critical. It reads and processes just fine with or without spaces.

First half—second half

Processes as:

First half—second half.

That's the nuclear option, if you find it necessary.

RejectReality said:

—

The ampersand and semicolon are both critical. It reads and processes just fine with or without spaces.

First half—second half

Processes as:

First half—second half.

That's the nuclear option, if you find it necessary.

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Or, type -

What a lot of bother for a little line - do people really do all of that just to get a longer line? It's the words on each side of the dash that matter, surely.

She never felt safe at home after the break-in - or anywhere else, really.

Starts seriously looking like a typo when it follows a hyphenated word. Would be even worse if you use it properly ( which I don't, but that's neither here nor there ) and don't put spaces on either side.

Also becomes a problem if the words on either side could form a hyphenated word, and aren't supposed to, making the reader stumble.

Double hyphens mitigate both issues, but I find it unappealing to read that way. That's exactly how my em dashes from Wordperfect process on Lit. So, I'm willing to take the few seconds necessary to find/replace all.

LupusDei,

My grandfather married a witch, too! He was Jewish, so he married a witch from the white magic tradition of Ashkenazi Judaism (baal shem) rather than Baltic pagan, but I think witchcraft from both traditions comes down to talismans and really good soup, anyway.