I started using it after reading Bringhurst ( and the æ), and I have to say – there are a lot of people in my world who are willing to fight to the death to stop me. Unexpected punctuation can cause some serious rage. (I mean, I understand that þ is too far gone to be readmitted, but proper dashes and diaeresis are simple enough to be at least tolerated, if not actively encouraged.)
(Edit to add: so much easier to do when I was working on a Mac)
I have WTS but have yet to pick of TV. Gordon is extraordinarily creative in her explanations and examples.
I honestly would have had no idea about this except for occasionally clicking on a New Yorker article which, the first time, sent me googling about this umlaut phenomenon that even the 80s metal scene had not prepared me for.
For thorn and eth, we’ll always have Icelandic
Windows has Character Map for this. Click or press Start & type charmap and press Enter. Pin said program to the taskbar for quick access.
According to Wiki, both MacOS and Linux have similar features. (MacOS calls it Character Viewer).
If there is one ‘correct’ use of punctuation, no one pays any attention to it. Even the same author form the same publisher will have em—dash—without—spaces in one publication, and with — spaces in another.
And is an ellipsis a single character like this…? or three dots…? or should there be spaces between . . . the dots?
And the answer of course is whichever you feel like at the time, with bonus points if it annoys pedants.
Well, that was a dashed good read, chaps, dash it all.
Anyhoo, must dash!
Love, Em.
I hope not, cause in Finnish for example ‘o’ and ‘ö’ are different letters denoting different sounds. (Yes, I’m annoyed by Motörhead and Mötley Crüe.)
All of which have spaced before and after the dash. I simply cannot get my head round the US affectation for a dash with no spaces (hint - it looks like a narcissistic hyphen) because it is supposed to be used to designate a slight pause, an aside, not a continuation, so the lack of spaces seems almost purpose-designed to prevent the pause.
So I like your examples with spaces, but an en-dash would be so much more elegant. 
That article makes some sense except for the utterly nonsensical opening example of ‘coworkers’ (how, exactly, DOES one ‘ork’ a cow?)
It talks all about two consecutive vowels which is not the case with 'coworkers. It specifically says the diaeresis goes over the second vowel, but THERE IS NO SECOND VOWEL in ‘coworkers’!
And this is the esteemed Merriam-Webster? Good grief!
For me, the diaeresis implies a glottal stop, which is now rarely pronounced in these words.
As a punctuation mark, it’s just a dash. From a typographer’s perspective, it’s an em dash.
As for spaces around it, there are times when it’s appropriate. When setting a paragraph fully justified and narrow (e.g., in a newspaper column), an em dash without spaces can look more like a hyphen connecting two words than an interruption setting off a phrase. Thin spaces on either side of the em dash solves that problem.
But if you use spaces, there’s a chance that space just before the dash will become a line break, leaving the dash to begin a line. To me, that always looks wrong. So my preference is to use a non-breaking thin space before and em dash and a regular thin space after it.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine… has entered… the chat…
72 posts in 24 hours about em dashes. If we can find some topic that combines bicycles, punctuation pedantry, and veganism, we may have The Ultimate BBS Thread. I look forward to that day.
It was þoughtless ðat English þrew out ðe letters for two of ðe most common sounds in ðe language.
Make þ a þing again!
Keeping my knives sharpened—metaphorically—for that discussion.
I’ll make sure I have a cast iron defense.
Bring back Ȝ too
Ȝetland and Menȝies Campbell need it!
Orenwolf – the moderator – doesn’t!
I think it depends on what sort of dramatic pause one wishes to interject into a statement. My examples:
I accept that the World will eventually end – but tomorrow?
I accept that the World will eventually end — but tomorrow?
