[bookshare-discuss] Ellipses and em-dashes
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:27:46 -0700 (PDT)
I'm glad I read more posts before explaining the
difference between ellipses and em dashes. Guido did a
very good job. I'd just like to add a little more to
his explanation -- but before I do, Guido -- the em
dash isn't retained in txt. I'm validating this in
Word in larger font, so I can see it better, but I did
what someone suggested and closed and saved it in the
original txt to see what formatting was kept. The em
dashes, line breaks, and italics all were lost. So I'm
following the same person's suggestion (Kellie or
Jana, I think) and using a doulbe hyphen,with a space
on either side.
Ellipses are used, as the original poster (Was it
Dave?) said, to show that something has been
eliminated from a quotation. They can also be used to
show that a sentence is unfinished, as opposed to
being interrupted. I don't have any examples of that
in the book I'm doing now, but . . .
O.K. That was one. I couldn't think of how to finish
the sentence, so I used ellipses. Here's another: As
Mary came downstairs, John said, "Maybe tonight we
could . . . " His voice trailed off as he saw the man
behind her."
As Guido said, an em dash is a long dash, used to
interrupt a sentence with a different thought,
parenthetical or xplanatory but not necessarily strong
enough to be in parentheses. Here is an example from
the book I;m validating: "She gave a tiny laugh (em
dash) a nervous one, he thought (em dash) when it
took a minute for their strides to coordinate . . ."
(Here the ellipsis is because I'm not finishing the
sentence). Another examaple: "Daph (em dash)"
Another person interrupts: "I know." Here the em dash
shows that the person who was speaking was interrupted
rather than that he lost his train of thought.
I admit that since en dashes are used so rarely, I
can't think at the moment of why one would be used
instead of an em-dash except for poetic effect, which
is why I think it was used in Silk.
I hope this explanation isn't too long-winded or
doesn't repeat anything anyone has already written
that I haven't yet seen. And that it clarifies the
differences. As Guido says, and as you all know, a
hyphen connects compound words or breaks words at ends
of sentences when they don't fit on a line. But those
we close. Unfortunately, sometimes, as with the book
I've validating, scanners, and maybe validators, sue a
global replace to eliminate all hyphens and that
results in their being eliminated where they sometimes
belong.
Cindy
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