I do love an ellipsis, and always thought it looked better with some space, but had no idea there was an official allocation of space . . . very cool. Fun piece, Johanna :)
Glad you enjoyed it! Note: there are some style guides that indicate a space on either side of the three periods, like this ... , but most style guides, including the Chicago Manual of Style, indicate a space on either side of all three periods. ;)
Dang! I love the interest in this, as a writer/former English major/word prig, & appreciate the chance to learn more aspects of grammar. I knew nothing about the em- & en- dash, nor was I aware of the paragraph indent. Time to step it up. Many thanks for a great informative piece!
I was going to include the ways to implement en and em-dashes using your keyboard, but they vary depending on the system you're using or the app. With Macs, you can create an en-dash by clicking Option + Dash (-). That should do it.
Thanks! I googled it right after leaving my comment ... and now I'm gonna have to go back through the multi-hundred-page draft I've been writing to fix all the wrong Em and En dashes. Ah well, such is the price of education. I learned a lot from this post -- the first I've read on your site -- and will definitely come back for more!
I do love an ellipsis, and always thought it looked better with some space, but had no idea there was an official allocation of space . . . very cool. Fun piece, Johanna :)
Glad you enjoyed it! Note: there are some style guides that indicate a space on either side of the three periods, like this ... , but most style guides, including the Chicago Manual of Style, indicate a space on either side of all three periods. ;)
Dang! I love the interest in this, as a writer/former English major/word prig, & appreciate the chance to learn more aspects of grammar. I knew nothing about the em- & en- dash, nor was I aware of the paragraph indent. Time to step it up. Many thanks for a great informative piece!
Always learning!
Very interesting! Among other things, I'll now have to figure out how to do an en-dash with my Macbooks Pages program . . .
I was going to include the ways to implement en and em-dashes using your keyboard, but they vary depending on the system you're using or the app. With Macs, you can create an en-dash by clicking Option + Dash (-). That should do it.
Thanks! I googled it right after leaving my comment ... and now I'm gonna have to go back through the multi-hundred-page draft I've been writing to fix all the wrong Em and En dashes. Ah well, such is the price of education. I learned a lot from this post -- the first I've read on your site -- and will definitely come back for more!