dashes

[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]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

[Vertigo]

I think you might be right that it is changing - though I'#m not so sure it's gone as far as preferred. Certainly in older books I've read (Wells, Conan Doyle, Verne, Wodehouse etc.) it always seems to appear with no spaces whether it is paired or not. In more modern books I have seen paired dashes appearing both with and without; not too sure which I see more often though.

I would add though that the same web page I quoted above goes on to say:

While there are many more possible uses of the em dash, by not providing additional examples, I am hoping to curb your temptation to employ this convenient but overused punctuation mark.