I never realised up until today (I am ashamed to admit) that the convention is for no spaces. I always offset señor em-dash.
However, I think my reasoning went thus. I put a space after ‘,’ unless the comma precedes a quotation mark. I similarly would never ever not put a space after ‘.’, nor ‘;’, nor finally monsieur ‘:’. Also to contrast with the way-one-uses-hyphens.
But an unbalanced em-dash, like so– would look preposterous so left open – is how I came to use it over time. But now that it has been brought to my I find that this– is not so preposterous and in a mono font this – does appear to be swimming in space. I may have to train myself–thus–though it may take some time.
If you prefer spaces around the dash, then use an en-dash. This is standard outside the US, though not universally. Most US publishers use the closed em-dash.
I never realised up until today (I am ashamed to admit) that the convention is for no spaces. I always offset señor em-dash.
However, I think my reasoning went thus. I put a space after ‘,’ unless the comma precedes a quotation mark. I similarly would never ever not put a space after ‘.’, nor ‘;’, nor finally monsieur ‘:’. Also to contrast with the way-one-uses-hyphens.
But an unbalanced em-dash, like so– would look preposterous so left open – is how I came to use it over time. But now that it has been brought to my I find that this– is not so preposterous and in a mono font this – does appear to be swimming in space. I may have to train myself–thus–though it may take some time.