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I have been doing quite a lot of manuscript editing recently and realize that many people—including academics—don’t understand the differences between the symbols hyphen, en-dash, and em-dash. So here is a quick explanation: hyphen (-): is used to join words (“music-related motion”). You type this character with the Minus key on the keyboard, so it is the easiest one to use. en-dash (–): is used to explain relationships between two concepts (“action–sound couplings”) or in number series (0–100). I haven’t found a way to type this on Ubuntu, but on Windows, you can use the Alt key and press the ASCII code 0150. On Mac, you get it by pressing the Option key together with the Minus key. In Markdown and HTML code, it can be written with the command –. In LaTeX, it is written --. em-dash (—): is used to break up a sentence—like this one—and can be used instead of commas (,). On Ubuntu, it can be typed with the Alt gr key together with the Minus key. On Windows, you can use the Alt key and press the ASCII code 0151. Mac is the most logical, using the Option and Shift keys together with Minus. In Markdown and HTML code, it can be written as —. In LaTeX, it is written ---. Looking around, I see that it is actually even more complex than this. On a How-To Geek page I learned that the minus sign used in mathematics (−7) is not a hyphen but has its own ASCII code and HTML representation: −. I also learned that from a typographical perspective, there are also “non-breaking hyphens” (‑), “figure dash” (‒), and “horizontal bar” (―). ...

Earlier today I was asked about what tools I use when writing. This is not something I have written about here on the blog before, although I do have very strong opinions on my own tools. I actually really enjoy reading about how other people work, so writing about it here may perhaps also be interesting to others. Text editor: Atom Most of my writing, whether it is e-mail drafts, meeting notes, or academic papers, is done in the form of plain text files. I use different text editors dependent on what computer/platform I am working on, and that is also one of the beauties of text files. They work everywhere. On my main laptop (running Ubuntu Studio), I primarily use Atom as my main text editor. This is mainly because it is cross-platform, has some plugins that are useful, and has excellent integration with Github. ...

I used to use Journler for taking notes on my computer, and when Journler died I moved on to MacJournal. However, nowadays I constantly find myself using different computers (Mac, Windows, Linux) and various mobile devices (iOS and Android) every day, and have found it to be problematic to be locked into an OS X/iOS application for note taking/access. There are some cross-platform note-taking applications out there, most notably Evernote, which I have tried to become friends with several times, without success. My biggest problem with Evernote is that it locks you into their system, and you cannot export everything in your library in an easy way. ...