Juli
Kendall's
2004-05
READING/WRITING
WORKSHOP JOURNAL
Entry #10
I'll Be Dashed
You can teach an old dog new tricks!
That's the lesson I just learned, and it wasn't an easy one. It seems that in all the education I had before and after my degree in English and even including my Masters, somehow I never learned about EN and EM dashes. Hyphens I basically understood, but I had no idea about all the other nuances. I came upon the need to use these dashes as I was working on some writing, and so I did a little research. On page 20 in the book, The MAC is not a Typewriter by Robin Williams, I found this explanation:Next, I did some reading on the Internet. I found a delightful article, "The Trouble with EM 'n EN (and Other Shady Characters)" by Peter K. Sheerin on the "a list apart" website. He starts off by saying:
En dash (option hyphen) – Width of capital letter N, used between words indicating a duration: October–December, 3–5 years of age, 7:45–8:45 AM. Can use thin space on either side; Also used when compound adjective and one of the elements is made of 2 words or a hyphenated word such as San Francisco–Chicago flight or pre–Vietnam war period. Em dash (shift option hyphen) – Is twice as long as the en dash, it's about the size of a capital M, indicates an abrupt change in thought, period too strong and comma too weak, no space on either side of it or double hyphen.
While I've happily lived my life to this point without this knowledge, now that I'm learning about en and em dashes, I decided to let the kids in on the secret. It seems they were already noticing that hyphens and dashes have different meanings and uses. Kids used the book, The Wide Window, Book the Third by Lemony Snicket, to find all sorts of examples of the use of hyphens and dashes. The entire Series of Unfortunate Events is full of great examples. It was tons of fun and involved lots of reading and talking about writing. Here are some of the examples they found:
Hyphens are Not Dashes Stop! Go back and re-read the subhead above—at least 2–3 times—then let it sink in before continuing.
The sentence above illustrates the proper use of the hyphen and the two main types of dashes. They are not the same, and must not be confused with each other.
So for our kids, the end result of all this fuss about EN and EM dashes is that everyone is reading the Series of Unfortunate Events books—there are now eleven—and paying closer attention to their reading and writing—even me!"Like most fourteen–year–olds, Violet was too well mannered to mention that if she ate a a peppermint she would break out in hives, a phrase which here means 'be covered in red, itchy rashes for a few hours.'" Page 3
"Your Aunt Josephine—she's not really your aunt, of course; she's your second cousin's sister–in–law, but asked that you call her Aunt Josephine—your Aunt Josephine lost her husband recently, and it may be possible that he drowned or died in a boat accident." Page 7
The rest of it—a large pile of boxy squares, all stuck together like ice cubes—hung over the side, attached to the hill by long metal stilts that looked like spider legs. Page 12
The Baudelaires thought of grammar—all those rules about how to write and speak the English language—the way they thought of banana bread: fine, but nothing to make a fuss about. Page 18
"I–T–apostrophe–S always means 'it is.'" Page 50
"Well yes," Violet said, "But—" Page 87
"That means," Klaus said, "that before long certain people will come to look at it. And some of those people"—he paused here dramatically—"will be realtors." Page 161
"Yes," Aunt Josephine said. "I mean no. I mean—" Page 190
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