I have the annoying tendency to surround my double-hyphens with spaces. It just looks wrong to me not to do so, but doing so is an error. The correct way to set off a phrase with dashes is as follows:
Note that on my keyboard, the hyphen (-) is the only dash available; the em-dash (—) is not available by any normal means I know of. (I’ve reproduced it here by cutting and pasting).
I wasn’t really offended. “Sure the words that I told you were only in jest…”
Is there a transatlantic schism on the use of em dashes? I usually see them either as regular dashes, or em dashes with spaces around them over here. As you said, a lack of spaces around them looks a bit odd.
Affect / effect: One of my pet peeves is people who use “impact” instead of “affect” because they don’t know how to spell it. (How does this impact the bottom line?) Ugh!
Another pet peeve: definately. Ugh! It’s “definitely”!
sailor - I’m not a huge fan of “impact” as a transitive verb, either, but it’s pretty much got a fairly solid foothold in our language. Dictionary.com has some pretty interesting usage remarks on this topic.
While I personally don’t like it, I really can’t see the problem with the word.
Originally posted by Cicada2003
Now, could you explain the use/non-use of apostrophe in the following phrase: His severance pay included six months’ wages.
Certainly: the wages were derived from those six months. Therefore they’re the wages of the months - and thus the months’ wages. (Fowler says this is entirely correct. Time increments “may be treated as possessives and given an apostrophe”.)
Yep; or an easier way to think of this is “could I insert the word ‘of’ indicating possession between ‘months’ and ‘wages’?” Yes, I could: “six months OF wages.” So the apostrophe, indicating possession, is correct in this case.
Mind you, I’m paranoid that someone reading my CV will think my correct use of the apostrophe in “14 years’ experience” is “wrong” that I write “14 years of experience” instead. It’s especially important not be thought to be making a mistake when you’re a technical author, copywriter and proofreader by trade!
You know, folks, I really appreciate all your hard work and the effort you’ve put into the saving of apostrophes (the apostrophes’ saving) but - well, folks just don’t like them any more and I think they’re fast becoming an endangered species.
Any day now I expect to see one pickled in a jar and on permanent display in a language laboratory.
Are you kidding, Clone?! Looks to me like they’re breeding out of control, spreading like kudzu or cane toads. Somebody needs to invent an apostrophage.
I find it troublesome to use apostrophes correctly when writing English, since Dutch conventions are rather different. An apostrophe in Dutch is used primarily for legibility, and for denoting a ‘missing’ possessive ‘s’. Normal possessive case is denoted with a simple s. E.g.
The car of Peter = Peters auto
The car of Hans = Hans’ auto.
The cars of Hans = Hans’ auto’s.
As a consequence I do have to take care, especially when using possessive cases, that I won’t screw up. It’s not a question of ignorance, simply the confusion of writing in several different languages. I’m a bit surprised that this is not more common among ‘foreign’ Dopers. (elfje apparently has become fully assimilated )
I also have problems with Random Capital Letters. The engineers I work with like to capitalize nouns and adjectives, and sometimes just any word at all. I am always decapitating their sentences. (Yes, I know that word means something else).
We also have company certificates and official documents that mix up ‘effect’ and ‘affect’.
I too have trouble remembering it is ‘definitely’ and not ‘definately’. It helps me to remember the word ‘finite’ is contained in ‘definite’. For some reason I never try to spell ‘finite’ as ‘finate’.
If someone wants to tell me if I incorrectly placed my punctuation marks outside of my quotation marks, or that I did not need to use quotation marks, They are ‘Free’ to ‘Do’ so.
TTT, that is very interesting. Any day now pretentious people in the U.S. will probably take up the trendy European style of apostrophization, since everyone knows (even blustering insecure Americans) that European culture is superior, dontcha know.
Seriously, we will have to be a little more tolerant of our European friends who, after all are doing a much better job of speaking & writing English than most of us on this side of the pond do with any second language.
)