Dashes are our friends
OK, people.
I've had this discussion with my colleagues a million times, but apparently I have to have it again.
Write this down: there are three kinds of dashes, all with their own peculiar applications.
First, there's the lowly hyphen (-). The hyphen is unassuming, yet vital. You can't make a compound-anything (see?) without them. Since we're not speaking German, running all of the words together to make one big word doesn't work for us. So we turn to the hyphen, which makes it the essential-yet-underappreciated dash.
Second, there's the en dash (–). The en dash is used when you have a range of something, like years. For example, "Bob the Hairless (1452–1498) was king for some length of time." Now, a lot of people just use a hyphen in this situation, but if you have the en dash option, you should by all means use it. It's classy, and doesn't cost much.
Finally, there's the em dash (—). The em dash is used to denote parenthetical thought without using parentheses. For example, "Many people—including Bob the Hairless—may not have realized this little-known fact." If you're not writing in English, then you might use em dashes instead of quotation marks when writing dialogue. If you're writing in English and using them for dialogue, you're just being pretentious.
Sorry about the diatribe, but this is for your own good.
I've had this discussion with my colleagues a million times, but apparently I have to have it again.
Write this down: there are three kinds of dashes, all with their own peculiar applications.
First, there's the lowly hyphen (-). The hyphen is unassuming, yet vital. You can't make a compound-anything (see?) without them. Since we're not speaking German, running all of the words together to make one big word doesn't work for us. So we turn to the hyphen, which makes it the essential-yet-underappreciated dash.
Second, there's the en dash (–). The en dash is used when you have a range of something, like years. For example, "Bob the Hairless (1452–1498) was king for some length of time." Now, a lot of people just use a hyphen in this situation, but if you have the en dash option, you should by all means use it. It's classy, and doesn't cost much.
Finally, there's the em dash (—). The em dash is used to denote parenthetical thought without using parentheses. For example, "Many people—including Bob the Hairless—may not have realized this little-known fact." If you're not writing in English, then you might use em dashes instead of quotation marks when writing dialogue. If you're writing in English and using them for dialogue, you're just being pretentious.
Sorry about the diatribe, but this is for your own good.
posted by Sasquatch at
3:39 PM
6 Comments:
Perhaps you think it's funny, calling your blog "The Patterson Film." But, I for one, am tired of people who question this film's authenticity. Everyone says, "yeah, it's just a guy in a suit." Have you studied this film? Look at the creature's arms and legs in relation to one another. From that ratio, which medical experts refer to as the "intermembral index," it is easy to figure out how many inches must be added to the arms of a man of known size in order to make his arms long enough to fit the supposed suit. (In my own case the answer turns out to be about 10 inches.) But in order for the arms to bend at the elbow, which they plainly do in the movie, all of that extra length has to be added to the lower arm. The result, in my case, is about 12 inches of arm above the elbow and 29 inches below it--almost as much of a monstrosity as Edward Scissorhands. (note my proper use of the em-dash) The creature in the movie has normal-looking arms. It cannot be a man in a suit.
By
Anonymous, at 3/01/2005 10:23 PM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Sasquatch, at 3/01/2005 11:51 PM
Nice use of the em dash, by the way. I appreciate it.
By
Sasquatch, at 3/01/2005 11:52 PM
To respond to your main point, I do find it funny, if not at least somewhat amusing. I find a lot of things funny, because I'm kind of simple that way. I don't know if you took the time to check out the About section, wherein I state that it could be real.
Bigfoot may indeed be real, but I don't think so. Before you write me off as a mere cynic, please bear in mind that skepticism should not be equated with cynicism. Skepticism is merely a provisional approach to claims. You say it's not a man in a suit and expect me to believe it, then prove it unequivocally with some sort of independently-verifiable empirical evidence. I can't prove unequivocally that it's not real, either, but that doesn't mean it isn't. Ultimately there are more pieces of evidence pointing to the film's fakery than to its veracity as far as I can tell and that's what I'm going with. See Greg Long's book The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story, for example.
By
Sasquatch, at 3/02/2005 12:05 AM
I love Bigfeet. They are tasty. And very, very sexy. I like hairy guys with long arms. Yum.
By
Anonymous, at 3/02/2005 11:17 AM
I'm enjoying your blog almost as much as conversations on the metro home to Bethesda (after stopping at the newsstand), something I've missed over the last year!
By
Anonymous, at 4/05/2005 12:47 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home