If you read AP news articles and other documents, you may have noticed spaces before and after the long dash (em dash), which has traditionally kept close quarters with adjacent words and phrases. This new way of using the dash provides a nice, spacious appearance within a story.

The other way of using a dash, with no space before or after, provides a more interruptive quality. (I would show you how these look, but regrettably punctuation here is limited to hyphens.)

Could the traditional way of using tightly placed dashes reflect the nature of living in a large city, where houses are crowded together with little space on either side, and where cars drive bumper to bumper in spite of accident risk? Just a thought.

Space or no space, which one is correct?

There's room for personal taste. Some people prefer the look of no spaces or want to shorten text by saving a couple of characters. Others appreciate the more open appearance and readability of spaces. Still others just throw in hyphens with spaces – like this – in place of dashes. Not a big deal in a smartphone-driven, high-text world, but purists will get out the red ink at this point.

So that's a dash of insight on a trend in writing.