Dashes

3 Key excerpts on "Dashes"

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  eBook - PDF

  The Relation of Writing to Spoken Language

  • Martin Neef, Anneke Neijt, Richard Sproat, Martin Neef, Anneke Neijt, Richard Sproat(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  In contemporary English, period is another word for full stop (see Graves 1994). 17 The analysis to be presented does not aim at a new general regulation as to where the dash could be used. The context-based description given by the Official rules, is perhaps adequate on the background of its purpose, i.e. to give practical advice to users of the German language. It does not, however, represent academic research into the functional principles of punctuation. 136 Ursula Bredel (i) Historically early positions interpret the dash as a means of marking ruptures. In his handbook of the art of printing, Hasper (1835: 128) writes: 'The dash ( -) marks an interruption.' 8 The philologist Götzinger (1839; 1977: 427) assumes that the dash serves as a place-marker of all sorts of signs, i.e. to generally mark a pause or a divi-sion [...]. The grammarian Heyse (1900: 600) notes: The dash ( - ) generally marks an interruption of speech [...]. 20 (ii) Contemporary positions identify the core function of the dash as an indicator of change. The IDS-Grammatik (1997: 301) notes that the dash indicates prominent transi-tions. 21 Less consistent but nevertheless assuming the core function of a shift, Gallmann (1985: 156) writes: The dash expresses a contrast, a sudden shift in the train of thought, a surprise for the reader. 22 In the remainder of this paper, I will show in which way the characteristics 'interrupting' and 'changing' - when systematically referred to one another - configure the basic function of the dash. A historical reconstruction reveals the basic function common to all usages of the dash. Under this perspective, the dash appears as an 'offspring' of the hyphen which motivates spe-cific linking-operations that have been transferred onto the dash.

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  eBook - PDF

  Ellipsis in English Literature

  Signs of Omission

  • Anne Toner(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  As we have seen, in 1829 Justin Brenan, in Composition and Punctuation Familiarly Explained, described Lindley Murray, author of the ubiquitous English Grammar, as having legalized the dash (see above p. 82). 7 In the earlier part of the century some still referred to the dash as ‘the break’, the function of which, as Charles James Addison wrote in 1826, 118 is to separate passages that have ‘no immediate bearing on the subject’. 8 But a new cohesive function to the dash began to be recognized. In a particularly enthusiastic commentary, Brenan praised it as a mark of unification rather than disruption, and one removing sources of ‘mystery’, ‘hesitation’, ‘ignorance’: The introduction of this stop is a most important accession. It completes the system of punctuation, removes all its doubts and difficulties, and leaves its study unembarrassed by subtleties. It puts simplicity in the place of mystery, gives decision in lieu of hesitation, divests ignorance of its impos- ing mask, and strips artifice of its deceptious solemnities. 9 The dash was also discussed by grammarians in combination with other marks of punctuation. These are the ‘dash-hybrids’, as Nicholson Baker has termed them. 10 Brenan’s description of ‘:—’ as ‘customary, or fashionable, in printing’ reflected the growing prevalence of combination marks. 11 Charles James Addison referred to the dash ‘when used after the higher signs’. 12 John Best Davidson, who was strongly disapproving of ‘!—’, 13 wrote in 1839 that ‘The dash never appears alone.’ 14 In 1842, F. Francillon commented that unless a dash is used as a ‘break’ to mark interruptions, ‘it ought only to be an adjunct to another point, and never to be used independently’. 15 Following another mark of punctuation, the dash was thought largely to accentuate the preceding symbol.

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  eBook - ePub

  Write to the Point

  A Master Class on the Fundamentals of Writing for Any Purpose

  • Sam Leith(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • The Experiment

    (Publisher)

  Coming Up for Air without using a single one. But then, a little poignantly, he wrote to his publisher to boast about it because—we can presume—he was worried that nobody would notice.

  On the other hand the Czech writer Milan Kundera, whose side I take in this, wrote in 1988: “I once left a publisher for the sole reason that he tried to change my semicolons to periods.”

  The Dash

  There are, for the ordinary user, two main sorts of dash:

  1. The em bar or em dash (which was originally the width of the letter M on a printer’s block): —

  2. The en dash (which was the width of an N ): –

  The dash, as they used to say about absinthe, rend fou .* Depending on your word-processing package, your nationality, and the time of day, the rules about Dashes will vary. The em dash and en dash are often in free variation.

  A dash can do the work of a colon, a semicolon, or a comma—essentially, marking off a pause or introducing (with a bit more emphasis) the coordinator in a compound sentence. Compare: He went to the chemist, but they were out of pregnancy tests. He went to the chemist—but they were out of pregnancy tests. The latter, with that slightly more dramatic pause, makes the case seem a little bit more urgent.

  Unlike commas or semicolons, however, they can’t be used in a limitless series.* You’ll find either one of them, or a pair, in any given sentence.

  Paired Dashes work to mark out parentheses or interpolations. I recognize in myself—because you end up noticing these things—an addiction to them. They seem to me to occupy a role somewhere between the comma and the bracket proper in this case: a little more swashbuckling than the bracket in terms of maintaining the conversational flow of the sentence; a little more emphatic (and, potentially, less confusing) than the comma. The material included between two Dashes is slightly more likely to be important to the meaning of the sentence than material between brackets—an addition or qualification rather than an optional extra.

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