Because parentheticals—as aside, explanation, enumeration—aren't taught and we are left to learn them by example, and not many people care enough about writing style to pick up on them and want to use them. Ask most people who don't deal with technical writing about the Oxford comma and they likely won't care, if they know what it is in the first place.
I will admit I'm more like to use "--" and not bother converting it if not done automatically on quick forum posts. You can find examples in my post history. But I come across them all the time in written works.
Many of us who use em-dashes are so used to Word/etc correcting -- to — that it's just part of normal typing. I'm find if it renders either way, but I use -- in writing all the time.
One day this whole thing is going to read like the 1980's where you could tell if a latter was written by a "real" typist and not a word processor by the lack of correction liquid/tape.
Why are they not in widespread use, though?
AACK!
Because parentheticals—as aside, explanation, enumeration—aren't taught and we are left to learn them by example, and not many people care enough about writing style to pick up on them and want to use them. Ask most people who don't deal with technical writing about the Oxford comma and they likely won't care, if they know what it is in the first place.
I will admit I'm more like to use "--" and not bother converting it if not done automatically on quick forum posts. You can find examples in my post history. But I come across them all the time in written works.
Many of us who use em-dashes are so used to Word/etc correcting -- to — that it's just part of normal typing. I'm find if it renders either way, but I use -- in writing all the time.
One day this whole thing is going to read like the 1980's where you could tell if a latter was written by a "real" typist and not a word processor by the lack of correction liquid/tape.
But this is the problem, if you type double “-“ on iOS, it just turns it into an emdash. (“—“)
Honestly — starting with the word honestly also seems like an LLM tell.