{"id":1147,"date":"2013-11-08T19:09:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T01:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writeherewritenowwriteon.wordpress.com\/?p=24"},"modified":"2016-02-04T11:36:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T17:36:48","slug":"dash-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/dash-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Dash it all!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Genevieve Bergeson<\/p>\n<p>In my punctuation pocket, I found three things.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong> This<br \/>\n<strong>\u2013\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong> That<br \/>\n<strong>\u2014<\/strong> The other thing<\/p>\n<p>Are they the same? Did something break when I sat down?<\/p>\n<p>Nope.<\/p>\n<p>So what have we got here? Two notoriously neglected\/abused kinds of punctuation: the hyphen and the dash. But which is which? How do they differ? Let\u2019s get these straight.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the line-up:<\/p>\n<p><b>The Hyphen ( &#8211; ), alias \u201cShorty\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>1. Makes<\/b> <b>compound <\/b><b>words<\/b>. They also attach single letters to words to make other words.<\/p>\n<p>Ex. Merry-go-round, mind-boggling, T-shirt, twenty-one<\/p>\n<p><b>2. Connects words<\/b> that are <b>split<\/b> <b>across two lines<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Ex. See, it makes con-<\/p>\n<p>nections.<\/p>\n<p><b>3. Attaches prefixes <\/b>and<b> suffixes<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Ex. Pre-fall, post-war, cat-like, length-wise.\u00a0 (In some cases, the dash is starting to fall out of style; for instance, either \u201clength-wise\u201d or \u201clengthwise\u201d is acceptable.)<\/p>\n<p>Usually, hyphens do not affect meaning, but that doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t. Observe:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kim\u2019s T shirt was all the rage at the preschool staff meeting. (The teachers agreed it would be fun for her to wear when she taught the kids the alphabet.)<\/li>\n<li>Kim\u2019s T-shirt was all the rage at the pre-school staff meeting.\u00a0 (It reminded the teachers of their fantastic summer breaks\u2014soon to be missed once fall term began.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>The Dash ( \u2013, <\/b>\u2014 <b>)<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Although two hyphens (&#8211;) may represent a dash, hyphens and dashes have very different functions.<b><br \/>\n<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Em dashes (\u2014) <\/b>always mark a<b> big pause<\/b>. They emphasize information by distinctly setting it off. They can also separate appositives\u2014phrases that rename the noun(s) they immediately follow, such as this definition\u2014with internal punctuation. Formatting tip: Type two hyphens without spaces on both sides. They should automatically convert to <b>\u2014.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>En dashes (\u2013)<\/b> express <strong>ranges<\/strong> in times or dates (and are interchangeable with \u201cto\u201d), e.g., 1775\u20131787. No drama involved. Formatting tip: Type two hyphens with spaces on both sides. They should automatically convert to \u2013.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully today\u2019s dash of punctuation demonstrates that details do make a difference.<\/p>\n<p><em>Genevieve Bergeson, in her second year as a Principia post-graduate teaching intern in writing, delights in all things creative\u2014art, words, and music. She has authored and illustrated the children\u2019s book <\/em>Racing Pajamas<em> (read more at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.drawstheeventide.com\">drawstheeventide.com<\/a>) and has several other stories in the works.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Genevieve Bergeson In my punctuation pocket, I found three things. &#8211;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This \u2013\u00a0\u00a0 That \u2014 The other thing Are they the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,109],"tags":[33,34,37,85],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punctuation","category-writeherewritenowwriteon","tag-compound-words","tag-dash","tag-hyphen","tag-punctuation-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DI6r-iv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1714,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions\/1714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}