MindsMirror
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2015
- Posts
- 316
What we've done in conversation is use hyphens. That probably wouldn't work in a formal paragraph.
"I - um - I - can't -"
-MM
"I - um - I - can't -"
-MM
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What we've done in conversation is use hyphens. That probably wouldn't work in a formal paragraph.
"I - um - I - can't -"
-MM
This is quite a useful guide to the use of commas in both English and American, starting on page 117. It takes a few seconds to download. It should open automatically if your browser's appropriately set up.
Thank you for this link. Commas drive me nuts and I'm sure I use too many, mostly. So many commas, so little time...
I don't know if it's copyright infringement. The Oxford people may have put the guide there, but I do know that it isn't both British and American style, as Green_Knight claims. It's just British style. There's much crossover of the two styles, but to claim that Oxford is good as an authority for American publishing is just incorrect (and British jingoist, which has become a Green_Knight hallmark on this forum). For American style, consult the Chicago Manual of Style.
I don't mind at all if story writers here use British style. It's a fine style, if you are consistent with it. It just is incorrect to say the British and American styles are the same or to think that those using British style don't sometimes have trouble getting their stories accepted here. This is an American Web site and it uses American style, and it's questionable how experienced the editor is in the legitimate differences between American and British styles, as about every month we get a post to the forum complaining because some treatment that's fine in British style was rejected. That's just reality. The styles aren't the same and this is an American-style site. And there's no reason to be bambozzeled about the styles being the same or British style not having some trouble being accepted here.
I noticed that the Chicago Manual of Style is available online via an annual subscription. Are you familiar with it? It appears the annual single user subscription is about the same price as ordering the hard copy book via Amazon. It would be useful to be able to access it via phone or laptop anywhere as opposed to lugging the book around.
This is an American Web site and it uses American style...
You keep on making this jingoistic statement. Please provide evidence of where Laurel has laid this down.
I've often wondered about that myself. I count a number of colourful little flags on the front page (somewhere, anyway), and there's no Stars and Stripes there (no Southern Cross either, but no matter). So are the flags aspirational, suggestive of an intent to make the site international, or merely decorational?
Regardless, Laurel has never said to me de-aussify your writing. My spelling, colloquialisms, geography, use of what is basically pommy style, none of that seems to offend. I drive on the left too, shock horror.
e.e. cummings offered the best agvice about punctuation: 'SEASON TO TASTE."
PILETTE is who I call THE GRAMMAR GESTAPO. Ten years ago my first brawl on this board was a fught with PILETTE about the function of grammar. GRAMMAR exists to improve your writing, it is not the ten commandments. Music advanced because artists discovered good places to use disgraced stuff.
You keep on making this jingoistic statement. Please provide evidence of where Laurel has laid this down.
e.e. cummings offered the best agvice about punctuation: 'SEASON TO TASTE."
PILETTE is who I call THE GRAMMAR GESTAPO. Ten years ago my first brawl on this board was a fught with PILETTE about the function of grammar. GRAMMAR exists to improve your writing, it is not the ten commandments. Music advanced because artists discovered good places to use disgraced stuff.
I've often wondered about that myself. I count a number of colourful little flags on the front page (somewhere, anyway), and there's no Stars and Stripes there (no Southern Cross either, but no matter). So are the flags aspirational, suggestive of an intent to make the site international, or merely decorational?
…First, that's not an em dash that you've put in your examples. So, a U.S. publisher would change that--an em dash, with no open spaces on either side…
You can accomplish a real emdash ("—") in text on Lit by entering the HTML code
&-#-8-2-1-2-;
with no embedded spaces—and without the hyphens I've used as spacers. (The semi-colon is part of the code; don't leave it off.) As Pilot has indicated, there shouldn't be any spaces between the emdash and the text to either side.
This doesn't work in most of Lit's titles—like those of the posts in this forum.
[A]uthors, instead of learning a set of rules and following them slavishly, must now think more carefully about what they're writing and the way in which their words might be interpreted (or misinterpreted) by readers.
This was answered. They merely are the international code signs for the language you'll get if you click on those buttons.
Need we continue to be dumb about this?
I get a real em dash in a Lit. submission just by putting a real em dash in my Word document. I cut and paste into the dialogue box. Maybe this is a problem in other forms of submission, but apparently not in cut and paste. (But, no, it doesn't work in the title block. I haven't tried it in the descriptor block)
Bit slow on the trawl through, mate, this was curiosity two days ago my time. Poor physicists, they need to reset their clocks, the smallest time increment known to man has just wobbled.
Don't you have anything better to do than check on every single post posted? Of course you don't. Post number 47,308 and ever onwards. And you reckon old Noir is an attention seeker. You got no mirrors at your place, or what?
I don't use M$ Word unless I must. Most of my writing is done in a text editor, and I submit stories to Lit. in text.
OK. I take it you're saying that your program doesn't have em dashes. But, yeah, Word is industry standard. Anyone using anything else to do anything has problems to deal with.