Em dash
August 31, 2026 · View on GitHub
Guidance
Avoid em dashes in technical documentation. They don't translate well for global audiences and machine translation engines. Use a comma, period, colon, or parentheses instead. Em dashes are permitted in brand and marketing content where a conversational tone is the goal.
Examples
Do:
The system restarts automatically — this takes about 30 seconds. → The system restarts automatically. This takes about 30 seconds.
Use the reload command — not restart — to apply configuration changes. → Use the reload command (not restart) to apply configuration changes.
Don't:
The process completes — then the system logs the result.
Notes
If an em dash appears unavoidable for readability, prefer two hyphens (--) in source files so it converts correctly in rendered output.