6 ms·
On dashes, hyphens, and other important aspects of life.
- gbog 13y agoIs it common to use "she" for punctuation marks? Or is it a perversion of the current trend in mixing he and she randomly? Oh, and is "looking" really an adjective? It must be: this author is lecturing us about English usage, I can't believe she wouldn't tell adjectives and verbs apart.
- zeckalpha 13y agoThe point is if you left the hyphen out, looking could be interpreted as an adjective, and therefore there must be a hyphen between friendly and looking.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Oh, and is "looking" really an adjective? Among other things. "looking" is a actually a present participle; this form functions as a part of a compound verb used in forming continuous tenses, as a noun, and as an adjective. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/present_participle http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/present_participle
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gbog 13y agoOk, then looking is not an adjective, it forms an adjective compound with another adjective.
- ledge 13y agoCorrect, a member of the same small POS group as 'smelling', 'feeling', 'sounding', 'tasting', and 'seeming'.
- ledge 13y agoThis thread is way off the front page so maybe you won't see this but I thought you might find it interesting. 'look', when not part of any phrasal verb ('look at', 'look for'), is actually a copula in English. A copula is a linking verb, the paradigmatic example being 'to be', that can occur in the pattern (subject) (copula) (adjective). That's what is happening in sentences like "The man (subj) looks nice (adj.)" Whereas with any noncopulative verb we need an adverb "The man ran quickly.", "The stocks fell rapidly.", etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_copulae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_copulae What's interesting is that if you look at the list of English copulae above, you'll notice that many of them ('smell', 'sound', 'feel', 'taste', and 'seem') are capable of the same kind of inversion as 'look' in their participle forms. So... "The chicken tasted funny." and "The chicken is funny tasting." "This song sounds sad." and "This song is sad sounding." It's a little more awkward to think of examples with 'seem', which is curious since it's the only one of those six copulae mentioned that isn't sensory in meaning. TL;DR: 'looking' is definitely not a standard adjectival participle, since it can't function as an adjective on it's own, but instead needs to follow another adjective. Another excellent example of how words do not conform neatly to part of speech categories.
- sriharis 13y agoHere's more on dashes and hyphens: http://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-and-dashes.html http://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-and-dashes.html
- paul_f 13y agoThe problem for me is remembering how to create the various dashes on a typical keyboard.
- grinnick 13y agoThat's was I was wondering. How do I write an Em dash on a keyboard? I've always just used a hyphen for this (but I'd like to do it right).
- rebelde 13y agoI have used MS's Keyboard Layout Creator to add those — and many others — to my keyboard. Right-alt-minus for en–dash and shift-right-alt-minus for em—dash. What I really want is for my keyboard to act like my mobile phone keyboard — a long press to see similar characters. Anybody care to code it?
- zokier 13y agoCustom layouts FTW. I have the following line in my layout configuration (Linux/xkb): key <AE11> { [ minus, underscore, endash, emdash ] };
- nucleardog 13y agoThat's what my Macbook does. It actually drives me crazy because you lose key repeat. You have to furiously mash keys in vim, no holding them down.
- Dylan16807 13y agoIt should be easy to use a meta key to specify you want a menu. I wonder if anyone's made the option.
- rebelde 13y agoMacs do that??? I'm surprised that I never discovered it on the wife's Mac. I deal with other languages so much, this might be the one thing that tips me toward using one.
- zeckalpha 13y agoThis leaves out hyphens at line breaks for long words.
- jgrahamc 13y agoWriting 'twenty eight' as 'twenty-eight' is accepted practice? The looks very odd to me. But perhaps that's a difference between British and American forms. Also 'friendly-looking' isn't joining together two adjectives , it's making a compound adjective.
- waqf 13y agoYes, "twenty-eight" is the preferred form in the UK.
- wbobeirne 13y agoIt makes sense, as it would remove the ambiguity of something like "Those are twenty eight year olds." Am I referring to 20 children, or some number of adults?
- moogleii 13y agoLooked fairly normal to me. US here.
- baddox 13y agoIf nothing else, that's how I learned to write out the number in words on a check (in the USA).
- Pxtl 13y agoI'll never understand typesetting fans. Two spaces after a decimal point is confusing and incorrect (even though it has the advantage of using buttons that are actually on the keyboard) whereas having three different kinds of dash that are identical except for width (the middle one being generally indistinguishable to the layperson's eye) is perfectly sensible.
- acheron 13y agoMy character set has 7 bits -- and that's the way I like it.
- transfire 13y agoOh bother. Use `-` for hyphen and `--` for dash. That's it and that's all you need. If a style transformer wants to convert `--` to – or —, fine whatever. But f* the difference between the two. Please, stop making things more more complicated than they need to be! It is so f*ing tiresome.
- carlob 13y agoIn HN style I'm going to comment by bashing a very minor detail of the article: at my current page width the subtitle: "Below I cover the common uses of three horizontal marks: the hyphen -, the en dash –, and the em dash —." breaks lines so that a new line starts with a comma and that's very bad!
- jstalin 13y agoUsing the hyphen in "friendly-looking" is incorrect. The exception for hyphens in compound adjectives is when the first adjective ends in "ly." It should be "friendly looking couch." http://www.grammar.com/compound-adjectives/ http://www.grammar.com/compound-adjectives/
- jonnathanson 13y ago"Friendly-looking" is correct (if a bit archaic), as "friendly" is an adjective, not an adverb. Most "-ly" descriptors are adverbs, and it is indeed incorrect to compound "-ly" adverb-adjective combinations with a hyphen. (For example, "finely-chopped garlic" is incorrect). But adjectives that end in "-ly" can be hyphenated. ("Friendly," "elderly," "dastardly," "squirrelly," "burly," "lovely," "ghastly," "deadly," and so on). These days writers often choose not to hyphenate them, as compound-hyphenation in general is dying out in contemporary usage. It often feels old-fashioned and fussy in informal writing. But there is no rule prohibiting the compound-hyphenation of adjectives with "-ly" endings.
- jstalin 13y agoThanks for the corrections! :)
- jonnathanson 13y agoNo worries. I dig the username, btw. :)
- bostonpete 13y agoThat rule applies to adverbs. The distinction is admittedly subtle, but this page lists the exception you cited (in rule 5), but also uses "friendly-looking" in an example (in rule 4): http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp
- dragonwriter 13y agoNo, if you read your own link, the exception identified is for adverbs that end in "-ly" that are part of a compound adjective. "Friendly", though it ends in "-ly", is an adjective, not an adverb. The "Friendly-looking" in "Friendly-looking couch" is an "adjective + participle" construction, which is hyphenated before the noun. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/images/ch07_tab01.pdf http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/images/ch07_tab01.pdf
- crux 13y agoThis is going to be an unfair comment. Today marks the first occasion that I saw the title of a post on HN, then saw that it came from Medium, and on the basis of its domain name decided that it would probably be a fluffy and superficial treatment of the topic alluded to in the title, where typography (ironically enough) and a very generous x-height gave the impression of substance to something that was in point of fact really barely worth writing or reading in the first place. Having noticed this thought arise, I decided I better go through to read the article and see if I was right.
- js2 13y agoThis article reads like a piece from a content farm. I flagged it and going forward the urge to flag everything from Medium will be hard to resist.
- tsm 13y agoWhile I think that proper em dash usage—like this—looks fantastic, I'd be happy enough if somebody just ran s/ - /--/g on the internet.
- dragonwriter 13y agoNote that different style manuals will suggest em-dashes set closed for that use or en-dashes set open; either is better than hyphens (open or closed).
- danielweber 13y agoWhat was that green bar flashing across the top of the screen while I was trying to read the article?
- baddox 13y agoAnd what symbol is used for the "minus" operator?
- ronaldx 13y agoAh, for minus you should probably use − (U+2212), which will typically display at the same width as numerical figures. Next question: should you use the same character for unary minus and binary minus? That is, to represent negative numbers and subtraction? ;)