What's the difference between an americano and a long black coffee? I'd often wondered. Both seemed to be espresso and water.

Not everyone will give you the same answer in a coffee shop if you ask them. But my understanding is the difference between an americano and a long black comes down to the order of adding your water to your espresso — an americano — or adding your espresso to your water — a long black one.

If you’re making your own americanos or long black at home, you may notice that a long black seems to make a more satisfyingly luxurious-looking coffee as it does a better job of preserving the crema on top.

Espresso, filter, americano and the redeye.

Perhaps I should speak to someone about this.

An americano and a long black: the difference

The bloody mary (vodka), ruddy mary (gin), virgin mary (alcohol-free) and the bull shot (beef broth instead of tomato). Has the added advantage of almost seeming like it’s something healthy to get. I always seem to end up ordering them on flights. Happy days.

Bloody marys

— and much nicer than using parentheses (). And —to go the full mile —why not use an en dash when you’re separating your page numbers 1–5 or months May–Sep next time?

Most writing tools and OSes have tricks to do these automatically for you.

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Know your dashes: the hyphen, en dash and em dash