Moratorium

I need to request a moratorium on asking questions about dashes, em-dashes in particular. I hope this is all right with everyone.

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."

Dashes

This web page has a good discussion of dashes: Guide to Grammar & Writing.

Parentheses vs. em-dashes and commas

The text describes the use of parentheses for including additional information or enclosing asides (p. 149). On p. 151 em-dashes within a sentence are shown to describe “an abrupt change of thought.” The second em-dash example: “Everyone in the class—students and teachers—appreciated the joke” suggests that commas could be used instead because the students and teachers phrase explained the previous statement. Isn’t this including additional information, so technically couldn’t parentheses also be used?

Is there a standard such as using em-dashes within dialogue sentences and using parentheses within text? Is the choice of using parentheses/em-dashes/commas dictated by the editor’s style guide or is one option more preferable? I guess I'm just a little unsure about how the choice of specific punctuation can change the meaning or emphasis of a sentence.

(Sorry if this was already discussed Friday!)

em-dashes again

I had a problem with the em-dash on the first test and I still can't figure out how to make one on my computer. I have it correct once (but that might have been from the original text and had nothing to do with me), but the rest of mine didn't turn out. I Googled it and it says to use two hypens and that will make an em-dash, but mine won't change. Any suggestions?

Also, is that how I would use "Google" as a verb? :P

Dashes and things

Hi, when would you use just one dash?

Also, in Japanese class, my professor said something about adjectival (sp?) nouns. What the heck are those?

Em-dash

Just to make certain for the upcoming test:

An em-dash is simply an elongated hyphen with no spaces between it and the surrounding words? How exactly are they used?

Em-dashes

My question is kind of niggling, actually. I believe I may have missed it in class: For an em-dash, is it always necessary to indicate with the appropriate mark (1/M, my best approximation)? Or does it only apply when the word processing program fails to convert the -- into a long dash? Or have I reversed this dilemma? It actually would seem easier to me if the author or editor left the m-dash as a --.

(from Ryan)