H.M:d-4
In the grand tradition of 'what you'd expect from a beta-reader', this day's "Happy Post" is basically an tip of the hat, of sorts, to two of my most favored-and oft times, er... abused-punctuation marks:
EM-DASH
ELLIPSES
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-
-
-
-
...
...
...
...
...
and even sometimes,
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
[ Yes, I prefer them without the spaces. I hate when I see writing with two ellipsis marks and then the third on the next line! How ghastly! Seriously, it's the most disgusting, ugliest patch-work formatting I've ever seen. Treating the ellipses as a single mark/entity makes sense on so many levels... I do not, however, like --, even if I have used them. No... — all the ay, baby! ]
I love them both so much. In fact, while I consider the en-dash a tad... non-committal, it even gets a bit o' love-by-association. Tho' not much. Sorry, Brits.
-
-
No contest. Call me a size queen all you like.
And I like my em-dash without the spaces. It's interrupting... barging in... throwin' 'bows... elbowing... nudging its way in-Move over and make Room for Me!-so it doesn't require any whitespace.
But I like these two marks because it allows me to type as I write... with thought and pause. If you see an ellipses with me, for instance, you know that I actually did pause, and you read it just as I mean for you to read it. When I used to write speeches for Communications courses, I used the ellipses almost exclusively. I didn't bother with the comma=1 pause-semi-colon=2-period=3, instead... I use ellipsis marks. Some may consider my love for the ellipses to be evidence of some deep-seated need for control-breath control, reading control. You may well be right. But for whatever reason, I love the ellipses and the em-dash.
They make me happy.
Long may they reign!
EM-DASH
ELLIPSES
-
-
-
-
-
...
...
...
...
...
and even sometimes,
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
[ Yes, I prefer them without the spaces. I hate when I see writing with two ellipsis marks and then the third on the next line! How ghastly! Seriously, it's the most disgusting, ugliest patch-work formatting I've ever seen. Treating the ellipses as a single mark/entity makes sense on so many levels... I do not, however, like --, even if I have used them. No... — all the ay, baby! ]
I love them both so much. In fact, while I consider the en-dash a tad... non-committal, it even gets a bit o' love-by-association. Tho' not much. Sorry, Brits.
-
-
No contest. Call me a size queen all you like.
And I like my em-dash without the spaces. It's interrupting... barging in... throwin' 'bows... elbowing... nudging its way in-Move over and make Room for Me!-so it doesn't require any whitespace.
But I like these two marks because it allows me to type as I write... with thought and pause. If you see an ellipses with me, for instance, you know that I actually did pause, and you read it just as I mean for you to read it. When I used to write speeches for Communications courses, I used the ellipses almost exclusively. I didn't bother with the comma=1 pause-semi-colon=2-period=3, instead... I use ellipsis marks. Some may consider my love for the ellipses to be evidence of some deep-seated need for control-breath control, reading control. You may well be right. But for whatever reason, I love the ellipses and the em-dash.
They make me happy.
Long may they reign!