Tuesday, February 27, 2007

More about em-dashes

(from Moon-Yun)

As I went over the second exam, I realized I didn't know what a "1 m" or "2 m" meant nor what it stood for and when we use them. Why can't we just use hyphens? Isn't it easier? I lifted these text from last night's Oscars. Are these "1 m" or "2 m" and how did they decide to use them and why?

After five best-director nominations — and five losses, including one for the masterpiece "Raging Bull" — Martin Scorsese got payback big time last night, taking the Oscar for best director and best picture for the mob saga "The Departed" at the Academy Awards.

Al Gore may not have won the presidency in 2000, but in 2007 he won an Oscar for best documentary — the global-warming cautionary statement "An Inconvenient Truth."

1 comment:

Pat said...

They are all 1/M. Please refer to (1) the other posts on em-dashes, (2) pp. 24, 25, and 151 of your textbook, and (3) sec. 2.75 of the Chicago Manual pages that I uploaded to the Files section of our home page.

Hyphens are not equivalent to em-dashes; that is, they are different punctuation marks and have different functions. However, hyphens can be used, when typing, to indicate em-dashes.