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MMacD
MMacD
10:43 AM
@KyleStrand: the original question was, does capitalization, punctuation, etc. belong on a site for English-language-learners? * Actually it wasn't, it was about dashes. I suggested that capitalisation et al. is *stylistic, not an integral part of the language, because different stylistic conventions do not change the meaning or our ability to comprehend it.
(I don't know what happened to my italics). Commas, periods, and semicolons have a role because their use can actually change interpretation. But an en dash vs a hyphen? No earthly way.
 
 
5 hours later…
Sasha
Sasha
4:07 PM
@KyleStrand, @MMacD
I'm not expert/linguist. I'm not English native speaker. I write here just to give side-view (not necessarily objective) if you're interested.

1. I consider written-English to be either separate language, or part of (full-)English; but it's obviously **a language**.
I learned English mostly by reading computer programs user interfaces and programming manuals; during that process I didn't know how most of words are pronounced; of course I pronounced them *somehow*, but that had no idea about how to pronounce them in pronunciation-English; not only English-speakers, but m…
. Although words-written-with-hyphen are not fully merged, but the intention of hyphen is to make them *closer* than when putting space between them. So, function is almost the opposite. Although, non-English native speaker also can mix up dashes and hyphens (and the fact than English has more than 1 dash type: n-dash and m-dash — makes distinction even harder).
But still dash and hyphens are cardinally different things, as for me.
Sorry for breaking into your discussion :).
 
MMacD
MMacD
4:57 PM
@Sasha: if you're Russian, as your handle seems to suggest, then I sympathise with your feeling that written English is a different language. Many non-native speakers suspect it comes from a different planet. English spelling conventions are as bad as Gaidhlig's.
 
Kyle Strand
Kyle Strand
@Sasha Thanks very much for your contribution! That's actually a pretty cool story about learning written-English without learning how to pronounce it.
@MMacD I do think confusion could arise (at least momentarily) from confusing en-dash with hyphen. Consider:
"I would like 10-12 would be to many-bagels."
Er, "would be too" not "would be to".
This is obviously much clearer as "I would like 10--12 would be too many--bagels."
(And yes, it's a little awkward, but not un-idiomatic; it would be appropriate, I think, as a line of dialogue in a novel.)
 
MMacD
MMacD
@KyleStrand: That insertion, whether with an hyphen or even an em-dash, is ripe for being misunderstood, so it's not at all clear to me that knowing when to use which dash is important. For one thing, it's essentially impossible to get the "correct" length when writing by hand. Yet if text-mode English is to be called a separate dialect, then handwriting must be an example of it.
@Sasha: would you consider the written form of your first language (is it Russian?) to be a separate dialect of the spoken form?
 
Kyle Strand
Kyle Strand
5:13 PM
@MMacD For a less contrived example, consider if your first encounter with Emily Dickinson was formatted using hyphens instead of en-dashes. Even though there's no clear meaning for hyphens in that context, one might expect that perhaps Dickinson intended for the lines to sort of blend together (since, as Sasha says, hyphens make things closer) as a poetic technique.
This would not be an unreasonable interpretation, since no one really knows exactly what Dickinson meant by the en-dashes anyway; they are just the same sort of poetic effect, but in reverse.
Are you serious about "correct" lengths when writing by hand? There's no clear visual difference between hyphens and en-dashes in typography, either, except the length. Have you never seen handwritten text involving hyphens and/or dashes? Hyphens are approximately one character long, even when written by hand; dashes (en- or em-) are multiple characters long. It's actually quite clear.
My point with the "10-12 would" is that "10-12" looks like a range, whereas "10--12" looks like a separation. Since in fact it is a separation, "10--12" is clearer.
Perhaps you'd appreciate the example better if "bagels" were assumed:
"How many bagels would you like?"
"I'd like 10-12 would be too many." vs "I'd like 10--12 would be too many."
I don't think the final version is "ripe for misunderstanding" at all.
 
Kyle Strand
Kyle Strand
5:31 PM
....in any case, whether or not you "like" those examples, I think they demonstrate beyond a doubt that your statement that there's "no earthly way" an en-dash versus a hyphen can affect understanding was...exaggerated.
 
 
1 hour later…
Sasha
Sasha
6:43 PM
@MMacD, yes, English pronunciation conventions are for me as from different planet :).
My statement was not that spoken and written are different dialects. My statement was that reading/writing itself is also a (sufficient) form of knowing a language. One may learn only speaking and other may learn only writing — and they both (to the same level) know language (although they can't communicate neither in voice, nor in chat; but a pair who both learned only speaking can't communicate in chat too; and a pair who both learned only writing can't communicate in voice too). It's just two different…
 
Kyle Strand
Kyle Strand
@MMacD I've made a question about this thread on Linguistics.SE, so perhaps we can get some clarification on some of these issues now from people with more expertise: linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/20768/2041
@Sasha Sorry, that's probably because some document editors (such as Microsoft Word) expand "word--word" to "word—word". I've just grown used to typing "--" as my standard "dash." It looks like Word also converts "word -- word" to "word %ndash; word", but I typically prefer em-dashes, possibly because that's what I'm accustomed to from reading novels.
....and, sadly, it looks like chat doesn't use HTML formatting, or if it does, I don't know how to make it work. #&8212;
<html>&mdash;</html>
.... ah well.
When reading, I do consider an en-dash surrounded by spaces to be equivalent to an em-dash with or without spaces. An en-dash without spaces wouldn't look right to me in place of a dash, I don't think.
 

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