h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got much better after I got the book. Honest.

And luckily I was being interviewed for a Community Person's job. So it dont mater if i cant write good. Ther r peple here to help me.

Hmmm...BBC bashing could be one of the more risky activities on h2g2.


I've already admitted to them that I don't pay my licence fee

B

I expect the dogsmileys will be let loose on you soon.

Can I throw in another complication, to do with dashes rather than hyphens? In the UK, typesetting convention dictates that you use a spaced en dash whereas in the USA the convention is for an unspaced em rule. So, why does the US built MSWord [rhymes with Turd] give you an en rule when you type #space# hyphen #space#?

And DNA always tried to avoid the end-of-line broken word hyphens appearing in his books, even rewriting sections to avoid word breaks. But those sorts of hyphens are different from the hypens that this topics about.

Must go home and lie down. Its been a particularly long week and this seems rather garbled.

Will play hunt-the-hypen-at-the-end-of-lines in the H2G2 books when I've recovered.

Oh yes...word breaks should be avoided at all costs. I knew DNA was heartily against them, although I did flick through the trilogy and find a few.

The en and em dash are bloody annoying in MSTurd, that's why I use Lotus . Is there any way to turn them off when I'm writing formulae and so on?

B

I have come across a fair bit of anti-hyphenism, as my surname is hyphenated.

Apart from people never knowing which initial to file me under, they look at me as I'm giving myself airs and graces.

Alot of data entry systems don't like hyphens so it either gets left out or both names run together.

Because I'm a stubborn so and so, I've retained my maiden name just annoy telesales people and receptionists.

Apologises to any hootooers who are in either or both of the above occupations!

What kind of person pays good money for a punctuation guide? One who likes writing correct English and who wasn't taught punctuation beyond the basics at school. By basics I mean comma, full stop, question and exclamation marks. Colons, semi-colons and dashes weren't mentioned. Hyphenation was something I had never heard of until long after I left school.

I have also paid money for books on grammar and usage and abusage, which are invaluable.

I deal with grammar on an intuitive level. I couldn't tell you what a subjunctive is, or even if such a thing exists, but if something doesn't _look_ right, I know it. I write what I think looks right, and matches what I hear or read. That usually means hyphens rather than running words together. I would either hyphenate or entirely separate all the examples in post 11. As for dashes, I view them as either alternative brackets - with spaces on both sides - or like semi-colons, slightly stronger than a comma but less than a colon or full stop.
And I don't think I would even look at a grammar book if I bought one. When I do make a grammatical mistake, it usually takes someone pointing it out for me to realise it.

Dashes in sentences (especially used as semi-semicolons, as Bob says) are certainly more representative of spoken language. I think this could be why the Powers are cutting them out of entries.

Used as parantheses, they don't really do anything that can't be performed as well by commas or brackets, so they are fairly redundant in that respect. I seem to vaguely remember being taught at A-Level English Language that there was supposed to be a power order of parentheses:

Commas - Something that should be read as essential
Dashes - Something that contributes to the text but is not essential
Brackets - An aside; not directly relevant to the text on either side

I remember thinking that this was rubbish at the time, and I still stand by that.

B