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January 22, 2010
Picking up our Friday Lite Language series, after a brief respite—well maybe not that brief, we attempt to tackle those little irritants of punctuation—the dash and its little cousin, the hyphen.
Since it’s getting confusing—very.
There’s a current debate as to whether one should write the term for electronic mail with or without a hyphen — i.e., e-mail or email.
A while ago I read that programmer, Ray Tomlinson, the first person to send an email, claimed the word shouldn’t have a hyphen.
All those needless key strokes, he said— if you added them up you'd have billions of wasted motions every year.
Made sense to me; I stopped putting the hyphen in.
Now I see The New York Times has put the hyphen back in and calling it e-mail.
The hyphen ( - ) is often confused with dashes ( —, ― ), which are longer and even more annoying.
If I was more able-minded I’d be able to explain it more fully.
But I'll make the attempt.
We don't have just one dash, we have the em dash (—), so named because it's the width of the letter "M" and the wimpier en dash (–), which is the width of the letter—well, you guessed it.
On old fashioned typewriters, we had to make an em dash like this. [ -- ]
The em dash denotes a pause in thought, a parenthetical statement, or — more casually — an afterthought.
The only reason it’s not used that properly is that many people don't know how to make it.
(In most word-processors, it's created by holding down the option key and hitting the key that has the underline mark above the hyphen.)
The en dash is mostly used to indicate a range of numbers, like pages 12–549.
Or, as in the Jets upset the Colts, 24-21. (Not that I know anything.)
The easiest definition I've heard is that the en dash connects. While the em dash separates.
Just remember not to use dashes when commas would do because the comma will get very annoyed.
An angry colon is another matter entirely; especially if it's mistaken for a semicolon.
Other dashing characters include the tilde (~), the underscore (_) and the Armenian hyphen (֊), which you probably don't need to know about.
Some of these ingenious little figures are credited to Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century and the publication of his 42-line Bible.
Punctuation is really a series of conventions that help us communicate and I don’t see why we have to pay strict attention to the rules—since nobody knows them anyway.
I still refuse to put the hyphen back into email.
I won't be bullied—then again...
About Dickinson's Use of the Dash english.illinois Take a look at an interesting article we found.
History of the English Language englishclub.com Take a look at an interesting article we found.
History of the Punctuation of English Writing sjsu.edu Take a look at an interesting article we found.
I like a dash of pepper on Manhattan Style Clam Chowdah, but will use several dashes to jum...
Jan. 22, 2010 2:23 PM
Most irritating punctuation mark?
3% 27% 23% 20% 27%
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I doubt if I could talk without parenthesis, sometimes I need a double which is probably going a bit far but I do insist that both ends are balanced.
It is so darn hard to use a - in italics
I insist that E-Mail be written with the Hyphen, to preclude anyone's mistaking Email for an Eastern European Name ....... and missing the point altogether ... Besides, Hyphenated Names are a bit more Dashing --- Don't you think ???
I couldn't write without a dash - otherwise known as a hyphen - or could I?
If you write e-mail as "email" your spell check will not recognize it.
The inappropriate use of the apostrophe is THE worst punctuation gaff, hands down. Even the brass sign attached to the building where I work has a mismatched apostrophe, so I get reminded of the illiteracy of even our professionals, AND of the laziness of those assigned to proofread such errrors & omissions BEFORE paying invoices.
The rules for using an apostrophe are the hardest for me to remember. Even if I had them tatooed to my hand, I'd still probably mess it up. It is very hard to figure out 's or s' when writing foriegn names that have odd combinations of z and s at the end. It never looks right.
I use punctuation as if all those symbols were spices on my spice rack -- and as if I were Julia Child making soup. I still wonder if it has ever been decided by 'style-masters' whether (if one chooses t (and if one wants ) to do so) one can nest parentheses one inside the other as one does when writing computer code. Or should that be stylemasters?
I am wondering just how often anyone actually does mistake the word email for an Eastern European name.....
My gripe is the inappropriate use of quotation marks. Rarely does a day pass that a co-worker doesn't place quotation marks around a half dozen commonly used phrases in his email.
When I see a sign with this irritation, I want to ask the sign maker, "Who said that?"
Eye think spelling errs are still the worst gaff, especially when they turn out to be properly spelled misused words. Email and the Detectives, that Disney classic, or Menotti's opera Email and the Night Visitors ?
I thought it was spelled Emile. Silly me.
Bert, I think I sent this to you once before.
http://www.apostropheabuse.com/
Shadonista, for you.
http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/
I just hope they never add a smiley face to the keyboard.
Slightly off topic, nevertheless relevant: Tonight between 08:00 - 10:00 Eastern Time, George Clooney, favorite son of Maysville, Kentucky, will host a telethon fundraiser for earthquake relief after the Haiti tragedy, which is ongoing. The show is worthwhile as entertainment, and if you remember he did a great job in similar capacity right after September 11th. There are remote feeds from lots of other locations, I plan to watch @ Caproni's Restaurant on Rosemary Clooney Drive on the Maysville riverfront, shaking down my rich friends {those with vocabularies containing words like "equestrian" or "Bentley" in their active vocabularies, the lawyers smart enough to avoid government assignments or indigent criminal defense...lol}.
I am with you Doc, at the end of the day, your word meal - a paragraph, letter, memo, or Emil; the question to answer is: did it taste good...did you comprehend what the conveyance of thought that was intended? And the real question is when two people read the exact text that is in 100% agreement with all rules of grammer and them comprehend it but come with two different meanings is, what went wrong? Words and punctuation are symbols of whats on your mind. If your selection and grouping turned out a fine kettle of alphabet soup, then enjoy it.
The article mentions that technology has a play on what punctuation is used Mr. Eye over looked bold, underlining, and all the new smilie faces that convey the emotion like: AND I AM TICKED OFF!!!
And seriously it is good to come close. I think the biggest error in punctuation is the lack of punctuation such as the run on sentence which can often mislead the reader in what the subject or the verb is and like really when like i am trying to understand what my teacher is tring to tell me is wrong with my chidls paper it in a memo home to me like really hard to undertand what she is tryng to say or what the heck is she talking about, cause its if you want your child to do good and wanna help it is like really frustrating...does this happen in your school?
For this who have experienced Cincinnati Chili; you know what I am talking about.
them = then...but you probably figured that out already
As I digest Paul's post, the thought occurs to me that punctuation, traditional and nouveau, is body language for the written word.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Miss Blue - I am in HELL!!!!!!!!
By the way, my keyboard has no key for the hyphen. What "gives?"
Here's the advice I give my kids: "Know the rules, and when you understand them, then you can decide if it is appropriate to break them."
I'd rather be dash-ing than hyphenated but e.e.c. says it best.......
I've still got the DVD set of "Schoolhouse Rock" on my wishlist at Amazon. Maybe one day I will figure out all this puncuation stuff I learned in school, but never really remembered.
Puntuation puts the english on English
I am lapsing into a comma.
and speaking of that,(or in this case reading the written that)how strange isit that the word for not being able to pronounce sssssssss's, is lisp?
SHANDONISTA:
Your keyboard has to have a dash. How else would send an SOS?
Keep looking, maybe between the "0" and the "=" keys. That's where mine is.
I like the riddle of using punctuation mark to make sense of the following:
Mary while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better influence on the teacher
damnselfly -- It's ALWAYS appropriate to break the rules.. Just as long as you don't get caught...
Rings90: Perhaps you need to carry my card, the "get caught" part doesn't always go as planned...lol
So anyway...who's hungry? Yesterday's topic still has me jonesing for a polish dog with carmelized onions and saurkraut. Just can't figure out how to segue commas, dashes, hyphens, and other punctuations into food.
hot-dog
Nachista~Have you tried ... ... Alphabet soup? . If you put it thru a blender.just a 'lil, you might just get all the great works of Shakespere,some assembly requred
beef-n-cheddar
pizza by-the-slice
thin-crust with extra cheese, green-peppers, spinach, pinion pine-nuts, I-sausage & a large vanilla coke. Make that to-go.
I use a dash when I can't remember if a compound term is one word or two.
Which happens more often than I would like.
or; thin-crust with extra commas,parenthesis but hold the semicolons.
rings90: At 7 and 4 they don't need to know that yet...but I suspect the 4 year old has begun to figure it out.
korthal - I have the dash, which Peterman titles the 'en dash' and which is, as you correctly point out, situated between the '0' and "+=" key. It is the longer 'em dash' that I seem to lack. In the picture above, it is located on the '6' key.
So I'm sitting in the customs line early Wednesday morning, headed south from Vancouver into the US.
I do this trip roughly once a week, so it's pretty routine. But there's something new today: bright new LED signage sorting incoming cars into the right lanes.
One sign says: s along with me anyway: you never want to step inside the CBP office without your documentation in order.
Whoops. My message got totally eaten.
I like a dash of pepper on Manhattan Style Clam Chowdah, but will use several dashes to jump start New England style clam chowdah.... —.— now I must dash off to my car 'cos I left the keys sitting on the dash, right next to the hula girl and the dog with the bobbing-head. and with that said, I beg your leave and promise not to inflict myself upon you any further.......... today
more on the honor rollPL - PL:
Come back soon.
SHANDONISTA:
That's not a keyboard that an old style typewriter.
Very old style!
Maybe before you time?
But for us older folk, we barely remember them, since we have JUMPED into the EYE
Except for Andy Rooney on 60 minutes.
He still uses that old timer, or so he says.
How about "Your time".
PeterLake, I love your dashes, which I need as I do things such as clam chowder, which a dash of hot pepper sauce improves.
I can neither speak nor write without parentheses; colons; ellipsis; semicolons; hyphens; quotation marks, all kinds, dashes; periods; commas, and I'll probably remember a few more when I finish writing this. I have spent hours deciding on a colon, only to return next day and replace it with a semi-colon.
There's a joke-but-true about a writer who comes down for lunch and is asked by his mate, "Did you have a productive morning, dear?" "Yes!" he replies joyfully," I changed a semi-colon back to the colon it was yesterday. It finally felt right."
E-mail is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, different (In my view) from "real" writing. It's chiefly wonderfully cheap long distance, so different rules -- or no rules -- apply. I never feel I'm truly writing when I use e-mail; rather, it's conversation.
And the very thought of a thank-you note for, say, a wedding gift by e-mail is anathema.
Just imagine the mess if we had no structure. And no PeterLake.
Thank-you notes still
I knew it: forgot exclamation points, possibly because each of us is allotted so many per lifetime, it's said by some -- to prevent their being overused. Sometimes I can't help myself, and go mad with them. It's a fine feeling
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eve - If you ever run low on exclamation points, you can have some of mine. I've got all of my ancester's rollover exclaimations so I'm in good shape.
I learned to type on a typewriter just like the one in the picture above. Kept it in my room for many years and cursed those black ribbons regularly. I wish I still had it; it was a real beaut.
I'll fess up on something about me. I have a hockey blog and it generates enough revenue to buy tickets to games. My blog like most blogs allows you to have an avatar to "hide behind" So does mine. In hockey, the boards along the parameter of the ice are called dasher boards. When listening to games on the radio you'll at times here the play by play announcer say about the puck something that goes like this: "Gretsky sends that one "off the dasher" and in to the corner." So I picked the avatar name offthedasher. Over time it wore down to dasher and eventually dash. Its kind off like calling John jack. Now I am thinking it could evolve to"-" and then - and then . Would I then be like Prince, the man with no name. If I could only get paid for this. Always thinking.... Maybe I need an agent...maybe I should wait till I am only a -. But I better do it before I become a because my agent wouldn't no how to get a hold of me. Better keep my day job
You might guess its Friday...and I am toast.
What abundance: Generous PeterLake gives me myriad exclamation points!! A real gift it is, too, as we get so few in this life. PeterLAke, you are very dear. As everyone agrees.
PAUL MURPHY, I learned more about hockey from your words than ever I've known about it Thank you -- and your 'blog sounds great for people who Do knoiw about it.
DOC NOLAN, many times one nests one inside the other; also there's much need for the single one's being used within a parenthetical remark. English never fails in complexity; I wonder often how our many immigrants manage. (Yes, my family were once immigrants, I haste to say before someone points
out only American Indians are NOT immigrants. But mine chose a challenging time to come: No Golden Door welcoming them; no Ellis Island. In the 1700s you just got off the boat, then did what you had to. Very different now.
And forgive me, please, new immigrants among us, but on this subject I always want to ask. "When do I become 'native'"? (Nested parenthetical, O bliss!)
Ice Hockey?????
Somebody who was a writer before he died afterwhich he didn't write anymore said that using an exclamation point in your writing is like laughing at your own joke.
PARK- That was a very funny little zinger. Ring a ding dinger...
"The easiest definition I've heard is that the en dash connects. While the em dash separates."
I think our world needs the en dash more than the em dash. It's a lot nicer to connect...don't you think?
If you want to see some imaginative use of punctuation (and some long spells where he just decided to skip the bother) check out then-famous and now-forgotten 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle. I hope this link works so you can enjoy a small sample of his baroque (actually Churrigueresque) ramblings... http://books.google.com/books?id=A8hHAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+of+the+french+revolution+thomas+carlyle&source=bl&ots=P35CC-DYu5&sig=qDMZnwaZkm7reD-bf80ut2-J0Mo&hl=en&ei=TExaS7iiBYa2M-y_nfkO&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false ; . (One of these days I have to figure out how to use TinyURL...)
Well at least itgets you to the first page.... go inside (the index is hyperlinked) to get your fill of punctuation frosting and tons of sugar signifying ... what?
I love all of you people! You make my hyphenated, comma'd, dashed life so much richer with your wonderful input!
iT'S THE END OF THIS PERIOD,PERIOD
KSS,
Comma-toes eh? I have heard but can't say for sure that Birkenstocks are the ticket.
P4,
A writer who lets death get in the way of his work probably wasn't...
Twalker,
Your presence is requested in the Club Car where everyone wants to sit next to you.
Me first.
Who knew? Justin Timberlake singing Leonard Cohen and it's really good.
Twalker - Welcome to the neighborhood. Hope you'll like it enough to come back.
Why don't we all hyphenate our names,on the anniversary of this post....Road-Yacht,Peter-Lake,e-t-c
RY~
"iT'S THE END OF THIS PERIOD,PERIOD"
Isn't that menopause? And why is it called that?
Stoney~ so the men can stop running, scratch that, so they don't have to dine and.....dash
I'm sorry....that was not up to our usual level of cool
WT: That is reallt Funny !!!!!!!
And SHANDONISTA seems to stuck in Michigan !!! (I thought Lodi was in California)
Shift, option, hyphen produces the em dash on a Mac————
RY:: "I'm sorry, that was not up to our usual level of cool."
LOL hilarious.
Which also isn't up to par, but so what.
Oh how you can make me laugh, what a guy.