(Untitled)

[moominmolly]

In the spirit of "post the stories when they happen", I was reminded this morning of something that happened during bedtime-story-reading the other night: I wound up explaining the difference between an en dash and an em dash to N because she stopped me in mid-sentence to ask why they were different.

I admit I conflated the en dash and the hyphen

Comments

[rosefox]

I admit I conflated the en dash and the hyphen so as to not bore her too much

You're just teaching her that the so-called "dash binary" is FACT when there are MORE OPTIONS and you are contributing to EN DASH MARGINALIZATION and should be ASHAMED.

[the_xtina]

*chokes on knitting*

[moominmolly]

*is ashamed.*

[rosefox]

Now I want to do a children's book all about punctuation.

[sandhawke]

Um, how exactly did this come up in bedtime-story-reading? You are not -- as far as I know -- supposed to actually pronounce the dashes.

(Okay, it was a little contrived, but I tried. And I do want to know.)

[moominmolly]

Heh, nicely done.

How did it come up? She follows along while I'm reading, and noticed the difference in length between emdashes and all the other dashes, and just asked. She notices stuff like that.

[chaggalagirl]

you have a scary smart kid, there. <3

[signsoflife]

Um, I think I learned the word "emdash" when I was writing my Master's thesis.

[artricia]

Well hey. I just learned a lot about a subject I thought I already knew well.

Thanks.