reading is my hustle’s Reviews > The Elements of Typographic Style > Status Update
reading is my hustle
is on page 81 of 352
i love the em dash but had no idea that it is the "... normal european method of marking dialogue."
— Sep 23, 2026 02:37PM
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reading is my hustle’s Previous Updates
reading is my hustle
is on page 81 of 352
em dash on a mac:
Press and hold Option + Shift + Hyphen (-) at the same time
— Sep 23, 2026 02:56PM
Press and hold Option + Shift + Hyphen (-) at the same time
reading is my hustle
is on page 81 of 352
or the three-em rule (3 consecutive em dashes) as a sign of repetition. it is the old standard bibliographic sign for the repetition of a name in lists and bibliographies.
— Sep 23, 2026 02:53PM
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Sep 23, 2026 03:05PM
That's interesting. I've noticed before looking at the only surviving Austen manuscript (the so-called "cancelled chapters" of Persuasion), that she did not usually start a new line of text for each line of dialogue, so—while she does tend to use quotation marks—she often offsets those lines of dialogue with an em dash on either side (or sometimes just one side—she can be actually a rather inconsistent writer in terms of punctuation, spelling, et cetera). I always think of Austen as sort of the queen of the em dash, so I thought it curious when i saw how many more em dashes she used by hand than ended up in the printer texts, and there are already many there!
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Hi Reading Is My Hustle,Just recommended this Netflix series to another GR reader...
The Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design features an episode about typography titled "Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design" (Season 2, Episode 6). [1, 2]
Hope you have an opportunity to watch this series and in particular the episode on Typography and if you do get to watch it I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
jacob wrote: "That's interesting. I've noticed before looking at the only surviving Austen manuscript (the so-called "cancelled chapters" of Persuasion), that she did not usually start a new line of text for eac..."not me running to look at my austen books...
Cheryl wrote: "Hi Reading Is My Hustle,Just recommended this Netflix series to another GR reader...
The Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design features an episode about typography titled "Jonat..."
thank you for this recommendation! i just added it to my queue.
You won't find it the way she handwrites it in the manuscript; the typesetters made tons of punctuational choices that don't represent her original manuscript, and one of them was standard quotations marks as well as line breaks for each person's dialogue—the way we're used to seeing it. That's how that was done back then in general, from what I understand; punctuation was really not especially standardized and typesetters often made those final choices. But look up images of the cancelled chapters manuscript and you'll see it!
There is also a wonderful documentary about the font, Helvetica.