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What does it mean when there's very long bar? I've encountered this many in
novels etc. Also, can someone write the long bar correctly? For some reason
there are spaces in my version (5 different parts) and there should be just 1
long part.

For example (I've seen longer ones, but here we have examples of a normal bar,
and then bars that are 3 times that size). This is just so that you understand
what I mean, unfortunately I don't have scans for the ones that are longer
than that.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xgjs6.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xgjs6.jpg)
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2018-04-13T09:56:46.497
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2018-04-13T15:43:50.733
2018-04-13T15:43:50.733
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question
punctuation
Meaning of long horizontal bar in Japanese
This "horizontal bar" is called ダッシュ and serves more or less the same purpose
as an _em dash_ in English — inserting additional information to a sentence
without ending the sentence or separating it completely from the sentence in
parentheses (see what I did there?).

It can be used in pairs — like this —, or simply once.

Unicode does have

> U+2E3A TWO-EM DASH ⸺
>
> U+2E3B THREE-EM DASH ⸻

but I don't know if they are used by Japanese publishers, since they often
have to typeset vertical text, as in your example. One also often sees "——"
instead, especially on the internet. Depending on the font there will be small
spaces, but everyone knows what is meant.

There is an obvious reason for using a longer dash (or several shorter ones):
a single dash looks too similar to the 長音符

> U+30FC KATAKANA-HIRAGANA PROLONGED SOUND MARK ー
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2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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answer