dashes

[Jo Zebedee]

tiny thing this, but it's doing my head in. I have a buttone on my keyboard which when typing gives this - and with shift this _. So far, so normal.

But when I type a sentence - and need to leave a parenthesis - sometimes it does it right, and they're both the same length. Other times it makes one long and one short and I have to go back and fix them. Why? Can I stop it....

 

[Mouse]

Because if it's attached to another word then it's a hyphen and stays small. If it's a - on it's own then it's an N dash and word changes it to one, and if it's -- then it's an M dash and word changes it to a bigger one.

I think.

So basically, make sure it's not touching another word- like that, if you want them to be the same size.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Cool, ty.

 

[The Judge]

Did you want them short? If you're using parentheses, to my mind you should use long, not short.

Trying to insert long into an already written sentence is a pain, though, because it will only change short - to long -- (only without the gap) if you go back to the end letter of the last word, hit space, type - and then space and another letter after it.

 

[HareBrain]

If you're using Word (and maybe other programs too) it's easy to assign keystroke combinations to special characters. In my case, em-dash is Alt+X.

 

[RcGrant]

Actually, this has been something I've found confusing. What is the standard in writing? If I am writing this - and then add a dash, should it be a short dash or long? Does it vary depending on US or UK English?

Ah!

 

[Ursa major]

Word usually changes -- preceded by a space to an n-dash, but only after you've typed the next word.

I usually** have autocorrect convert --- to an m-dash. But I needn't have bothered (at least not in Word2007):

Type Fred -- anything else and you get: Fred – anything else

Type Fred-- anything else and you get: Fred—anything else
​

The presence (or not) of a space after the -- is ignored: the deciding factor is whether you have a space before the double hyphen or not. If in the above examples the words, anything else, are replaced by a return character, you get the same effect, i.e. either an m- or n-dash spending on the presence of a space before the -- : Fred— or Fred –.



(I've only just discovered this. Thanks, Springs. )



** - I've just remembered that I haven't configured this on the new machine.

 

[Dozmonic]

In most packages if you want it converting to an em dash you can go to the first word after the hyphen and press space at the end of it, e.g. "and then -- or so I'm told - he ate..." if the first one is an em dash but the second didn't convert, click the end of the word he and press space, then back space and job's a good 'un

 

[HareBrain]

The auto em-dash to replace -- is quite useful (even works in Word 2002) but it gets more fiddly if you want to insert a dash during editing.

 

[Ursa major]

That's true. Even before, when I was using this just to add n-dashes in existing text, I got into the habit of typing <space>--<space>a<space><delete><delete>. (Using ctrl-<delete> removed both spaces, for reasons best know to the Word programmers.)

I wish I'd found the m-dash shortcut earlier. There was a time when I used m-dashes instead of ellipses to indicate interruptions in the dialogue. I could have saved one hyphen for every m-dash inserted.

(But this at least answers, in part, RcGrant's question: m-dashes are used without spaces, n-dashes need those spaces.)

 

[Warren_Paul]

I wish I'd found the m-dash shortcut earlier. There was a time when I used m-dashes instead of ellipses to indicate interruptions in the dialogue. I could have saved one hyphen for every m-dash inserted.

I've been saying this quite often in critiques it seems, but if everyone keeps using ellipses for interruptions, then maybe I'm wrong about them?

It was my understanding that an ellipsis has two uses, the first being to indicate omitted text, but the second, often used in prose, is to fade out into silence. Yet I've seen many people use ellipses to indicate the dialogue was interrupted by another character talking over them. I thought that was an improper use of ellipsis? Shouldn't it be closed dashes to indicate interruptions?

 

[The Judge]

I'm with you, Warren. To me the ellipsis is a fade out, and an interruption is a long dash. I don't know that it's improper to use them the other way round, but to me it definitely looks wrong, so I'd correct them, too, if I was critiquing. So carry on!

 

[Vertigo]

Now I have a question on em dashes. As observed above word will auto change the single hyphen, but it leaves a space. Should there be a space either side or not. So using -- for the em dash shoudl it be:

You are the one -- the only one -- that I oppose.

or

You are the one--the only one--that I oppose

Searching on the internet most seem to recommend no space. In books I sometime see one other times the other. I would say no space seems more common in older books. Personally I think it looks odd with no space; looking more like a long hyphen between two words that shouldn't be hyphenated.

 

[Ursa major]

I'm with you, Warren. To me the ellipsis is a fade out, and an interruption is a long dash. I don't know that it's improper to use them the other way round, but to me it definitely looks wrong, so I'd correct them, too, if I was critiquing. So carry on!

I tend to indicate the fade out by adding a full stop after the ellipsis. This seems reasonable enough to me: the speaker has said all they wanted to say at that point. This leaves the naked ellipsis for interruptions.


As an aside, I've just flicked through the pages of a couple of books: in The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod uses both m-dashes and ellipses, the former to indicate interrupted speech; in A Game of Thrones, GRRM doesn't seem to use dashes - or they're far less common than in Ken MacLeod's book - and rather than using ellipses, he uses three dots with spaces in between, such as . . . . (That final full stop is mine, by the way. )

This seems to be not only an area where different writers follow different usages, but where there are changes over time (for examples of which, look here).

 

[Ursa major]

Now I have a question on em dashes. As observed above word will auto change the single hyphen, but it leaves a space. Should there be a space either side or not. So using -- for the em dash shoudl it be:

You are the one -- the only one -- that I oppose.

or

You are the one--the only one--that I oppose

Searching on the internet most seem to recommend no space. In books I sometime see one other times the other. I would say no space seems more common in older books. Personally I think it looks odd with no space; looking more like a long hyphen between two words that shouldn't be hyphenated.

The usage I've seen most often (as in the aforementioned The Execution Channel) is that an n-dash has a space either side of it and an m-dash does not. This is the usage that Word2007 seems to be following (see post#7).

 

[Vertigo]

Yes Ursa and that's where I have a problem with the 'proper' usage. To me at least it visually attaches the first and last words of the interruption to the surrounding expression that it's supposed to be separating them from. I know it's right, it's just that it jars with me visually when I'm reading it. My mind seems to do a mental "eh?" everytime I come across it printed that way. Something I just have to live with I guess.

 

[Ursa major]

I don't like m-dashes used in that way either, and for the same reason.

As I've said elsewhere, I prefer my dashes - n-dashes, obviously - to be paired. One usage of the m-dash is, apparently, as a more visually noticeable replacement for the colon, which guarantees the use of a single m-dash. (No-one's suggested replacing semi-colons with n-dashes; that could only lead to war....)


But at least neither of us have been forced to use them that way (unless you've got an agent or editor you haven't mentioned).

 

[Vertigo]

Don't want to worry you Ursa but I came across this in my wanderings:

Use an em dash sparingly in formal writing. In informal writing, em dashes may replace commas, semicolons, colons, and parentheses to indicate added emphasis, an interruption, or an abrupt change of thought.

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/dashes.asp

But at least neither of us have been forced to use them that way (unless you've got an agent or editor you haven't mentioned).

I wish!

 

[Warren_Paul]

I tend to indicate the fade out by adding a full stop after the ellipsis. This seems reasonable enough to me: the speaker has said all they wanted to say at that point. This leaves the naked ellipsis for interruptions.

I believe the rule is: there should be four dots when it's ending a sentence, but only three during a sentence.

Maybe neither way is wrong, it just feels wrong to me I guess.

Now I have a question on em dashes. As observed above word will auto change the single hyphen, but it leaves a space. Should there be a space either side or not. So using -- for the em dash shoudl it be:

You are the one -- the only one -- that I oppose.

or

You are the one--the only one--that I oppose

Searching on the internet most seem to recommend no space. In books I sometime see one other times the other. I would say no space seems more common in older books. Personally I think it looks odd with no space; looking more like a long hyphen between two words that shouldn't be hyphenated.

You can do it either way, but I believe the closed (no spaces) is old fashioned, and the preferred method these days is to put spaces in. I believe in the case of interruptions though (a dash right at the end of dialogue), it's still preferred to have no spaces?

 

[mosaix]

One thing to be careful about, especially in the challenges, is that Word's word count counts one as a word and another as nothing.