[bookshare-discuss] Re: Ellipses and em-dashes
- From: Guido Corona <guidoc@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 07:48:40 -0500
You are correct. Neither my way nor yours are necessarily the best ones.
On the other hand, if you consider that we are creating documents for
paying customers, we should strive to offer them the best possible
product, which applies to the widest possible audience.
Whether you use Kurzweil, Openbook or Acme's OCR I do not really care.
What I care Is that the final product is of the highest possible quality
and is as close as possible to the body-text of the original. That
includes maintaining such characters as long-dashes intact if at all
possible, and font changes as well.
Guido
Guido D. Corona
IBM Accessibility Center, Austin Tx.
IBM Research,
Phone: (512) 838-9735
Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at:
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html
Dinky
Sent by:
09/30/2004 10:14 PM
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[bookshare-discuss] Re: Ellipses and em-dashes
Did you know Guido your way is not always the best way and we don't even
have to take the highway if we do not use your way or K1K? Hey. hey.
*smile* Did somebody make you God anyway? Sorry others listers and Dr.
Peter; sometimes my mouth and typing fingers are like a free bleeder.
Dinky
----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido Corona" <guidoc@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 12:27 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: Ellipses and em-dashes
> If you use Kurzweil 1000 long dashes are kept. PLEASE do not replace
long
> dashes with anything else.
> Only downlevel versions of Openbook massacre long dashes. Please update
> your OpenBook to the latest version or use Kurzweil. A long dash is a
> character entity encoded by a short series of bytes: it will survive in
a
> text file.
> Italics are a different kettle of fish and survive only in RTF, KES, or
> other marked up format. But once again, do not remove or change to
> something else. Just retain as RTF and submit the RTF file to
Bookshare.
> In general, we should not degrade the body content of the document if
at
> all possible.
> Guido
>
> Guido D. Corona
> IBM Accessibility Center, Austin Tx.
> IBM Research,
> Phone: (512) 838-9735
> Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at:
> http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html
>
>
>
>
>
> shannon work
> Sent by:
> 09/29/2004 09:09 PM
> Please respond to
> bookshare-discuss
>
>
> To
> <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> cc
>
> Subject
> [bookshare-discuss] Re: Ellipses and em-dashes
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Cindy,
>
> I am not trying to split hairs but just need a little clarification on
> something.
>
> In the post you made, wich I left atached, you make mention of
something
> called an en dash, and an m dash.
> Is this something different or was that a typo?
> Like I said not trying to split hairs but I just learned about the M
dash
> and this EN dash has me a little confused.
>
> I'm sorry, and apologise if I am pestering but, I am lost and never was
> much
> good at punctuation.
>
> Thanks for the time,
> Shannon
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Cindy" <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 6:27 PM
> Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Ellipses and em-dashes
>
>
> > 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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