Loosing? Learn the English language, people!

*

This was a note from my daughter's teacher 😐

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Just off Chiswick High St.
I hope it is related to Bada Bing (Sopranos)

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Seen in a shop last week: 'All Producks Offer'

Guardian sub-editing:

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last opportunity to see the "comet of the century", before it disappears for another 80,000 years

there'll be another 799 of them along within 80,000 years

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That fucking cap annoys me almost as much as the UK filth wearing two tone union flags with the thin blue line. It's all a bit "Stolen Valour" to me.
That's regardless of the erroneous apostrophe.

The apostrophe is actually roneous

There's no erroneous apostrophe--I posted it because it was about fixing things and the headline needed fixing (but in another way).

Grammissimo.

This is an appropriate thread to ask you about the double dashes you use - -

En dash?

An attempt at simulating an Em dash. Not perfect. I've looked up the code for an Em dash many times before, but I keep forgetting it.

Just looked it up again: U+2014

https://www.toptal.com/designers/htmlarrows/punctuation/em-dash/

On Linux: Ctrl-Shift (held down) U2014

Not to be used to separate parentheses. Apparently used like this:

* in date ranges, such as 1849–1863,
* to join two names in a phrase, such as the Michelson–Morley experiment,
* in multi-part prefixes, such as "post–World War II", although for those, either a hyphen or an en dash can be used; British publications use hyphens, and American publications use en dashes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hyphens_and_dashes

I've never seen the point of those. For me, the En dash isn't sufficiently distinct from a shorter hyphen.

Ah yeah — I like that you can hold down the dash on an iPhone

Let us look at this again. You're correct.

It’s a hot topic among copy editors — in the US more than the UK.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/style/em-dash-punctuation.html

To my ear, it has more of a dramatic beat to it than an en dash. Its slightly longer diving board lends a pause somewhere between a regular dash (en) and an ellipsis.

All this in an article which places spaces either side of the Em dashes ... :)

I think Em dashes are typographically much preferable. No spaces, please.

I've never seen the point of those. For me, the En dash isn't sufficiently distinct from a shorter hyphen

Hyphens in most typefaces should be a bit shorter to be honest, as they often were in traditional typefaces. They're only ever used within words, rather than between ideas, so they do kinda serve a distinct purpose, but type designers for more modernist/humanist typefaces seem to disagree.

Ranges do also look a little nicer with en dashes too (e.g. 12th–23rd vs. 12th-23rd), especially in more traditional fonts like Baskerville

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In reply to @Oliver Schick

The NYT and New Yorker style guides are bonkers ("coöperate", "D.J.-ing" for example), but this is all about personal taste imho. The more style guides I've read, the more I've realised they're just conventions, dictated more or less high-handedly depending on the author/publication.

I prefer no space if an em dash is after interrupted speech, it's between two dates, measures etc, or it's being used to balance out two mirrored clauses (man proposes—God disposes), but I prefer a bit of space when it's occupying a similar function to a regular dash.

Yikes. Really didn't realise I had such depth of feeling about em dashes.

coöperate

That's great though, we could do with more diacritical marks in english

I prefer no space if an em dash is […] between two dates, measures etc, or it's being used to balance out two mirrored clauses (man proposes–God disposes)

Noöo! between dates/measures is en dashes—between clauses is em dashes 😉

I see your point, but I think the difference here is made by the heavier line weight rather than by the length.

between dates/measures is en dashes

I agreë!

I'm saying that if an em dash has to be used to separate dates, I think it doesn't benefit from having spaces either side of it.

In reply to @Oliver Schick

The NYT and New Yorker style guides are bonkers ("coöperate", "D.J.-ing" for example), but this is all about personal taste imho.

I don't know. There are just various ways of separating non-diphthong vowels. A trema to my mind should only be used for different vowels, e.g. Haïti. Another problem with it is that it has different functions in different languages, e.g. in German it's *not* separate from the letters A, O, and U in Ä, Ö, and Ü—these are whole letters, or "Umlaute"—the diaresis is not the Umlaut/'umlaut', that's the whole letter. The hyphen in co-operate etc. is therefore a much better option. (I generally think that for most English compound nouns, which in English are generally not drawn together, hyphens are the preferred way of indicating the unity of the noun. Exceptions apply, but for clarity I think that's the best way.)

The more style guides I've read, the more I've realised they're just conventions, dictated more or less high-handedly depending on the author/publication.

I haven't read too many, but found plenty to disagree with in every single one I've seen. It's a terribly confused situation in German since the ridiculous spelling 'reform', which has left generations adrift.

I prefer no space if an em dash is after interrupted speech, it's between two dates, measures etc, or it's being used to balance out two mirrored clauses (man proposes–God disposes), but I prefer a bit of space when it's occupying a similar function to a regular dash.

Isn't that's an En dash you've put there?

Yikes. Really didn't realise I had such depth of feeling about em dashes.

Why not, if you're professionally concerned with them (as I guess you are)? (It should always be 'En dashes' and 'Em dashes'.)

I agreë!

$†øÞ ¡†, ℜ¡ġĥ† ∩∅ϖ.