# Non-native English speaker ... digressing into en-dash, em-dash and hyphen discussion



## Copyright

_<< Moderator Note.
This thread about the punctuation for non(-)native stays on topic for ~10 posts.
Then it begins to consider different kinds of dash and their usage.
Both topics are interesting, and both deserve a good airing in threads of their own.
Unfortunately, it is not possible (for me anyway) to unpick the interwoven topics in order to create two helpful threads, so they are just going to have to remain as they are.
A heartfelt plea, though:
Please, everyone, remember what you all know, that WordReference threads are expected to keep to the topic as set out in the first post.
If another topic comes to mind, please DO NOT introduce it and de-rail (or should that be derail) the thread.
Start a new thread and, if appropriate, included reference to the old in the new and post a link to the new in the old.
Indeed, please keep in mind forum rule #2:Stay on the topic of the first post in each thread. 
Ask about only one topic in each thread. If you have more than one  question, open a thread for each. 
If you wish to talk about a related subject that is different from the question  posed in the first post of the thread, open a new thread.​To facilitate the confused, I have changed the title of the thread to include the additional topics.
Please do not introduce any more topics, else I may have to change the thread title to "English", or worse.

panjandrum
(Moderator) >>_ 





I've used Search and found 497 threads with "non native english speaker" somewhere in the body, and 0 threads with anything similar in the Subject, so I'd like to ask: 
*What punctuation do we like for "non native English speaker"?*

I Googled and was stunned to find "nonnative English speaker."

I'm inclined  to go for "non-native English speaker."

I see it unhyphenated, as "non native English speaker," which I don't like at all.

And I wouldn't be surprised to find that some prefer "non-native-English speaker," although that construction might actually require an en dash somewhere.

But I would really like second, third, fourth and more opinions from the members here. Thanks very much.


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## Ann O'Rack

My gut reaction is to agree with your preference but not sure why. I can't see that anything other than a hyphen would be required, even for your last option, as it's not unusual to have two hyphens in a compound word: "mother-in-law", "master-at-arms" etc.


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## Grumpy Old Man

_Non_ is a prefix and as such is normally not hyphenated: _nonnative, nonadherence, nonprofessional_ etc. Any good dictionary confirms this.


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## Copyright

Grumpy Old Man said:


> _Non_ is a prefix and as such is normally not hyphenated: _nonnative, nonadherence, nonprofessional_ etc. Any good dictionary confirms this.



Not that onelook.com is the ultimate authority, but they do have a wildcard search for many dictionaries and this is just the beginning of hyphenated nons.


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## Ann O'Rack

Grumpy Old Man said:


> _Non_ is a prefix and as such is normally not hyphenated: _nonnative, nonadherence, nonprofessional_ etc. Any good dictionary confirms this.


 
However, if you look at hyphenation, hyphen _are_ sometimes used with prefixes, specifically where there is a double letter: re-evaluate, inter-racial and so on. (I don't have the books immediately to hand but I have read this in The Economist Style Guide and the Oxford style guide.)


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## bluegiraffe

I would entirely be going with a gut feeling, but I definitely think non native is two words, not one.  Hyphenated looks better if this could pass as a reason for using it!


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## entangledbank

_Non-_ is normally a hyphenated prefix in BE; AE fuses more than BE does. I would avoid keeping it as a separate word, but at work I just came across _non pre-let_ and had to leave it. I don't like two hyphens with different functions in a word.

The hyphen is totally inadequate to show the structure of compounds, but it's all we have. Does the expression meaning an English speaker who isn't native, by the way, or someone who isn't a native English speaker?

[non-native] [English speaker]
non-[native [English speaker]]

For the structure [X N] N, I prefer to hyphenate when X is an adjective, but not when it's a noun. That would make the positive form _native-English speaker_ if [native English] was a component, but I don't think it is (on either reading). So, finally, my preferred punctuation is:

non-native English speaker


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## mplsray

Copyright said:


> I've used Search and found 497 threads with "non native english speaker" somewhere in the body, and 0 threads with anything similar in the Subject, so I'd like to ask:
> *What punctuation do we like for "non native English speaker"?*
> 
> I Googled and was stunned to find "nonnative English speaker."
> 
> I'm inclined  to go for "non-native English speaker."
> 
> I see it unhyphenated, as "non native English speaker," which I don't like at all.
> 
> And I wouldn't be surprised to find that some prefer "non-native-English speaker," although that construction might actually require an en dash somewhere.
> 
> But I would really like second, third, fourth and more opinions from the members here. Thanks very much.



"Non-native English speaker" was how I would write it. Out of curiosity, I did a Google search for

"linguist list" "non native English speakers"

and

"linguist list" "nonnative English speakers"

so that pages of interest to linguists would tend to show up in the results (about Linguist List, see here). (A search with "speaker" instead of "speakers" turned up too few results.) The results were 94 for the first one and 69 for the second

On the subject of "nonnative", another Google search showed that "invasive nonnative species" was very much more common than "invasive non-native species".


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## panjandrum

You should find an old thread about nonnative and non-native.
I'll look in a moment.
...               *Non-native vs. nonnative and other hyphenations*
..... It's not as helpful as I remembered 

I find nonnative very off-putting. It should be read with stress on the first syllable, according to my brain, and I have to pause for it to catch up ... oh, yes, he means non-native.


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## Copyright

Thank you, all.

It's time to retire for the evening, so I'll look at this thread again in the morning. In the meantime, I picked this up from The Chicago Manual of Style, for what it's worth. They are definitely affirming "non-English-speaking," but I'm wanting to put a "native" in there without making it look too awkward, e.g. "non-native-English speakers." 

Ann, the reason I mentioned en dashes was I was wondering if it was needed like this: "non–native-English speakers." There, I've admitted it. 

Anyway, I'll leave you with this for the moment:

*6.85 In place of a hyphen                *

                The en dash is used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of its elements is an open compound or when two                   or more of its elements are open compounds or hyphenated compounds (see 7.83). As illustrated by the first four examples below, en dashes separate the main elements of the new compounds more clearly                   than hyphens would (“hospital” versus “nursing home,” “post” versus “World War II,” etc.), thus preventing ambiguity. In the last two examples, however, to have used en dashes between “non” and “English” and between “user” and “designed” would merely have created an awkward asymmetry; the meaning is clear with hyphens.

                      the post–World War II years
                      a hospital–nursing home connection
                      a nursing home–home care policy
                      a quasi-public–quasi-judicial body (_or, better_, a judicial body that is quasi-public and quasi-judicial)                      
_
but_
                      non-English-speaking peoples
                      a wheelchair-user-designed environment (_or, better_, an environment designed for wheelchair users)


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## sdgraham

panjandrum said:


> I find nonnative very off-putting. It should be read with stress on the first syllable, according to my brain, and I have to pause for it to catch up ... oh, yes, he means non-native.



Precisely.

 U.S. newspaper style is:
"Use a hyphen, however, before proper nouns or in awkward combinations, such as _non-nuclear_."



> Originally Posted by *Grumpy Old Man
> *_Non_ is a prefix and as such is normally not hyphenated: _nonnative, nonadherence, nonprofessional_ etc. Any good dictionary confirms this.


The use of hyperbole an an attempt to sound authoritative often results in one being hoisted on one's own non-native petard.

My _Collins English Dictionary_ (British) prefers _non-native_. For the same reason as Panj and I do, I suspect.


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## Grumpy Old Man

sdgraham said:


> The use of hyperbole an an attempt to sound authoritative often results in one being hoisted on one's own non-native petard.
> 
> My _Collins English Dictionary_ (British) prefers _non-native_. For the same reason as Panj and I do, I suspect.


I couldn't care less how natives want to write the word. Collins Concise Dictionary gives _nonaddictive, nonaggression, nonalcoholic, noncommittal, nonconformist, noncontributory, nondenominational, nonexistent, nonferrous, nonflammable, nonfunctional, nonintervention, noninvasive, nonjudgmental, nonlinear_ etc. It doesn't have _nonnative_, but the Random House Unabridged Dictionary has that  -  not _non-native._ It probably doesn't come as a big surprise that neither dictionary suggests _non native._ *Prefixes* are not separate words. If they were, _il legal, im possible_ and _un happy_ would also be correct.

There are exceptions. _African_ is capitalised. Therefore _non-African_ is hyphenated.

I understand that there is no absolute authority on correct usage of English and therefore I'm not saying I consider _non-native _incorrect. I'm just saying that _nonnative_ does occur in dictionaries. There are countless grammatical points on which there is no agreement in English. This disagreement doesn't seem to be limited to grammar.


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## ewie

_Non-native English-speaker_ is my preference.


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## JulianStuart

Isn't how natives write the word what should go into dictionaries?


My OED, by the way, has  "In the majority of the compounds of non- the hyphen is usu. retained; but it is commonly omitted in a few, such as nonconformist nonchalant, nondescript , nonsense ... "

The second hyphen was a pause for consideration, but now I'm wholly-behind ewie's version


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## Ann O'Rack

And in true British style, ewie side-steps the animation of GOM and tiptoes in very quietly with another suggestion!  Not sure I like the second hyphen as I wouldn't be even tempted to use it if the adjective weren't there. ("He's an English speaker" looks better to me than "he's an English-speaker".)

Some very good points, Grumps, old chap. If English followed the rules we'd all have a lot less to talk about on here, wouldn't we?

The reason why native speakers baulk at "nonnative" is because it looks like it should be pronounced "NON-uh-tive", which would be incorrect. 

(Why am I so tempted to add "so there, ner!" at the end of that?  )


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## panjandrum

If we are going to bandy dictionaries, I place the OED on the table, buckling its legs, open at the page with _*non-native*_ prominently highlighted 
No alternative spelling is given 

It also gives hyphenated forms for several other of the examples that Grumpy Old Man has listed   Following the pattern of the OED, many words that have been recently formed by putting a prefix on an existing word are written with a hyphen   In time the hyphen may fade away to the extent that writing the word with it will appear bizarre.  That has not yet happened with non-native 

And regardless of what other dictionaries have to say, I will continue to help my readers avoid confusion by writing non-native 

I'm a bit surprised at the view that one should not care less about how natives write a word.  That is, after all, the only way that the natural presentation of a word can be determined 

Edit: Smiley faces interspersed at Ann O'Rack's suggestion.


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## Ann O'Rack

Don't be too hard on him, Panj, he did put a smiley face in his post. (And of course he's a nonnative [sic] speaker so we shouldn't be surprised!)


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## JulianStuart

Ann O'Rack said:


> And in true British style, ewie side-steps the animation of GOM and tiptoes in very quietly with another suggestion!  Not sure I like the second hyphen as I wouldn't be even tempted to use it if the adjective weren't there. ("He's an English speaker" looks better to me than "he's an English-speaker".)



I deliberated here myself, Ann, but decided to allow the context to guide me (mods, please note my compliance  ).  The version you prefer _could _be describing someone at a conference where the language of discourse is English but there are speakers from around the world.  "Our next speaker will address the meeting on the subject of XYZ.  He obtained his undergraduate degree from  blah blah etc"  He is also English.

In this forum, we are more frequently concerned with specifying what language someone speaks  so he would be an English-speaker, and the issue is whether he is a native or non.


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## Copyright

My thanks to everyone (now in the morning) for your insights, suggestions and preferences. 

I try to keep an eye on trends in hyphenation and one of those is for fewer hyphens as long as the meaning is clear (to most of your intended audience). Indeed, I see that the Oxford dictionary people have reviewed 16,000 hyphenated words and either left them alone, dropped the hyphen and squished them together, or dropped the hyphen and left them as two words, so hyphen usage seems pretty malleable these days.

I sympathize with ewie's "English-speaker," because on the surface of it, it makes sense. But then  "coal miner" makes sense and it's not hyphenated. Also, working backwards, if you hyphenate "English-speaker," why wouldn't you hyphenate "native-English-speaker" to define that person... at which point, you might as well have a "non-native-English-speaker." 

And "nonnative" is a non-starter for me... as Ann pointed out, it's too easy to read as "NON-uh-tive." Plus, panj doesn't like it, so there you go...

To bring this long thank-you note  to a personal conclusion, I think I'll use "non-native English speaker," knowing that there will be some who think the person might be English, but so be it. Most people will understand the meaning given the context. 

Ultimately, I see  "native English speaker" as a three-word subject/descriptor and I like just bolting on a "non-" to describe it/him/her. It's not perfect, but then it's English, after all  (requisite emoticon).

Thank you all... again. It's been enlightening.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Afterthought: If you're (I'm) using "non" to describe a multiple-word subject, then the hyphen should more properly be an en dash. "The post–World War II years." "The non–native English speaker."

I think I need to lie down.


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## xjm

Fascinating.  I think hyphenating *English-speaker* in _context _is acceptable; if we said *non-native coal miner* there's no confusion because the person can't be coal.  However, the sense of *native *meaning "to this locale" is still possible, so the excessively hypenated *non-native-English-speaker *would be most clear... and completely against most hyphenation conventions.

I actually think misunderstanding the meaning of *native* (to place versus to language) is more likely than misunderstanding *English* (person versus language).  Consider: if you substitute synonym *anglophone* for *English speaker* the meaning changes:
*non-native anglophone*
This to me means that an anglophone is not native to the implied location.

And regarding en dashes...  I didn't even notice the difference without looking for it.  Does anyone actually notice the difference between *non-native English speaker* and *non–native English speaker*?  The en dash actually would do wonderfully for clarifying the meaning, if one were familiar with its use (as explained by Copyright) and noted the difference when scanning the text.


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## sdgraham

I'm not sure the concept of using an en dash instead of a hyphen or an em dash, for that matter, is relevant.

For the uninitiated, an en is a unit of measurement equal to a digit, which is equal to the width of the letter 'N' and the em the width of a single-character vulgar fraction, which also is equal to the width of the letter 'M." This is relative measurement and the physical size depends upon the font (typeface) involved.

All of this was relevant when typesetters (the human kind) were plucking type out of a font and trying to line up columns of figures as well as justifying textual material. I seriously doubt it matters with respect to hyphenation rules, especially in today's computerized world.


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## Copyright

sdgraham said:


> I'm not sure the concept of using an en dash instead of a hyphen or an em dash, for that matter, is relevant.
> 
> For the uninitiated, an en is a unit of measurement equal to a digit, which is equal to the width of the letter 'N' and the em the width of a single-character vulgar fraction, which also is equal to the width of the letter 'M." This is relative measurement and the physical size depends upon the font (typeface) involved.
> 
> All of this was relevant when typesetters (the human kind) were plucking type out of a font and trying to line up columns of figures as well as justifying textual material. I seriously doubt it matters with respect to hyphenation rules, especially in today's computerized world.



"Computerized world" has no bearing on the merit of en dashes. Because we have computers, we can just slop it all out there? Then let's just plunge right into text-speak, shall we. 

Maybe in a typewriter world, individuals could be forgiven their hyphen-substitutes for en dashes because their machines couldn't produce the character, but that didn't stop typesetters (manual and computerized) from using them, which is why we still have style guides and publications that help the reader understand what is meant.

En and em dashes are even more relevant now that everyone with a computer can produce them.  Microsoft Word, for example, lists both en and em dashes in their list of 20 "Special Characters" under "Symbols," so you don't have to go searching for them. In fact, type two hyphens together and it will become an en dash. So someone besides me thinks they're important enough to retain.

And en dashes certainly help me when I'm searching for  New York–London flights. Keeps me from wondering if the "New York-London flight" is a new flight departing from York. 

Give up en dashes for convenience and you'll give up  anything.


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## Grumpy Old Man

Ann O'Rack said:


> Don't be too hard on him, Panj, he did put a smiley face in his post. (And of course he's a nonnative [sic] speaker so we shouldn't be surprised!)


The people responsible for the unhyphenated _nonnative_ in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, in other words Webster's Dictionary, appear to be native speakers. A point to ponder for those who think native speakers' usage should determine what is correct and what isn't. Both _nonnative_ and _non-native _seem to be used by native speakers.

This doesn't surprise me. I have seen _tea cup, tea-cup_ and _teacup_ used by native speakers.


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## entangledbank

The en dash is a typographical nicety, but I don't think it's visually salient enough to carry much burden. In the absence of tree diagrams, square brackets, stress marks, or tone marks in the standard armoury, we're reliant on hyphens, and remember if we take those seriously we will surely go mad.

I wouldn't hyphenate _English speaker_. There's an argument that you could hyphenate all front-stressed noun–noun compounds: _coal-mine, coal-miner, Christmas-tree, English-teacher, walking-stick, mountain-climbing_. I'm sure you'd quickly find ones you didn't want to: _training-college_ is one that comes to mind, and proper names _Oxford-street, Boxing-day_ (as opposed to _Christmas Day_).

But the hyphen does give a useful intonational guide, distinguishing _English-speaker_ with the noun _English _from _English sheepdog_ with the adjective. In case of genuine ambiguity (_French-teacher, French teacher_) it's moderately useful (if only we could agree or show that _French teacher_ was late-stressed), but with the trend away from hyphens people are less likely nowadays to join noun–noun compounds. I'd still use it in attributive adjectives, as in _English-speaking peoples_.

Historical note. The Easter Islanders originally called their script _rongo-rongo_. One day a secessionist camp started writing it _rongorongo_ with the inevitable result: internecine warfare, deforestation, environmental and societal collapse.


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## xjm

Grumpy Old Man said:


> The people responsible for the unhyphenated _nonnative_ in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, in other words Webster's Dictionary, appear to be native speakers. A point to ponder for those who think native speakers' usage should determine what is correct and what isn't. Both _nonnative_ and _non-native _seem to be used by native speakers.
> 
> This doesn't surprise me. I have seen _tea cup, tea-cup_ and _teacup_ used by native speakers.



I agree that it's possible for someone to decide spell it that way; I just think that *nonnative* is exceptionally unclear because it is recognized as an entirely different word when one scans the sentence.  "Hyphenate with double n" seems to me to be a good rule of thumb that is nonetheless clearly not used everywhere.

Regarding usage determining what's correct and what isn't--the main difference between speech and writing is that writing must capture the meaning of spoken language clearly without including all the additional information spoken language provides (through pronunciation, intonation, stress, nonverbal cues, etc.).  

Spoken language is a different cup of tea.

Perhaps a generation of children will grow up reading "nonnative" and learn to pronounce it "correctly" as "non-native," complete with pause in the middle, along with all our other ridiculous spellings.  That wasn't my generation, though.

Edit: Non-ASCII characters are a nightmare for web developers (me) who have to deal with garbage (sorry, "copy") pasted from Word into web documents.  I can't always assume the luxury of unicode, and they render as little question marks or rectangles for some users until I convert them to HTML special character entities.  Often by hand.  I would prefer that curly quotes, em dashes, en dashes, and so on die a swift death.  I asked about the en dash because I thought I would need to change this opinion if it were of any actual use.


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## Copyright

Copyright said:


> Afterthought: If you're (I'm) using "non" to describe a multiple-word subject, then the hyphen should more properly be an en dash. "The post–World War II years." "The non–native English speaker."



On a practical note, it occurs to me that people who decide on an en dash -- yes, both of you  -- can use it knowing that hyphen people  won't notice the difference.


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## ewie

xjm said:


> curly quotes






Copyright said:


> it occurs to me that people who decide on an en dash can use it knowing that hyphen people  won't notice the difference


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## natkretep

I don't like *nonnative*; I don't like *cooperate* – for the reason rehearsed above. But these forms are very common in American academic publications on linguistics: there's a general tendency to fuse *non* to the next bit. From the comments made, it looks as if academic publications in AE do not necessarily follow popular usage.

BTW, did anybody notice the en dash I used above?


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## xjm

ewie said:


>



Curly quotes are these animals: *‘  ’  “  ”*

Word inserts them automatically (because, you know, they're all typographically pretty and stuff), along with various flavors of non-hyphen dashes.  End users don't know the difference.  Content managers panic and tell me their page is full of little squares.  I beat my head against the desk and get to searching and replacing.



natkretep said:


> I don't like *nonnative*; I don't like *cooperate* – for the reason rehearsed above. But these forms are very common in American academic publications on linguistics: there's a general tendency to fuse *non* to the next bit. From the comments made, it looks as if academic publications in AE do not necessarily follow popular usage.
> 
> BTW, did anybody notice the en dash I used above?



Alas (or thankfully?) not until you pointed it out!

It did take me a while to learn *cooperate *as a child, but I think if my department suggested spelling *non-native* without its hyphen, I would resort to using synonyms and avoiding the word entirely!  Linguists, of all people!

Edit: It does look like our University Communications style guide recommends *reenrollment*, *reentry*, *reevaluate*.  Sadness.


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## bluegiraffe

Copyright said:


> "Computerized world" has no bearing on the merit of en dashes. Because we have computers, we can just slop it all out there? Then let's just plunge right into text-speak, shall we.
> 
> Give up en dashes for convenience and you'll give up anything.


 
I would be interested to know how many people know that an en dash even exists, let alone what it is for.  I've certainly never heard of it, this doesn't make me some text-speaking neanderthal, nor does it mean my grammar and punctuation is so terrible I should be scorned.

I don't want to get into some terrible argument here so how about if I add a smiley face? :0)


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## Copyright

natkretep said:


> I don't like *nonnative*; I don't like *cooperate* – for the reason rehearsed above. But these forms are very common in American academic publications on linguistics: there's a general tendency to fuse *non* to the next bit. From the comments made, it looks as if academic publications in AE do not necessarily follow popular usage.
> 
> BTW, did anybody notice the en dash I used above?



I did.  There are two conventions for dash  in my world -- you can use an em dash with no spaces on either side, or an en dash with one space on either side. For most of our clients we use the "en dash and spaces" solution because it looks a little airier. 

To those who don't care for en dashes, do you really use hyphens with numbers, e.g. 12-15 September? No, wait, don't tell me....


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## xjm

Copyright said:


> To those who don't care for en dashes, do you really use hyphens with numbers, e.g. 12-15 September? No, wait, don't tell me....



Indeed, you probably don't want to know.  Unfortunately, you'll likely notice which we're using, and it's we who won't know the difference.


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## Copyright

xjm said:


> Indeed, you probably don't want to know.  Unfortunately, you'll likely notice which we're using, and it's we who won't know the difference.



You're allowed on the web... it's a real nuisance to deal with special characters, as you've pointed out. Curly quotes drive me crazy, just as they do you. I use Ultraedit text editor which seems to cleanse most things, but I still need to search-and-replace quotes.


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## Copyright

bluegiraffe said:


> I would be interested to know how many people know that an en dash even exists, let alone what it is for.  I've certainly never heard of it, this doesn't make me some text-speaking neanderthal, nor does it mean my grammar and punctuation is so terrible I should be scorned.
> 
> I don't want to get into some terrible argument here so how about if I add a smiley face? :0)



You're safe, I score very low on scorn.


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## sdgraham

Grumpy Old Man said:


> The people responsible for the unhyphenated _nonnative_ in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, in other words Webster's Dictionary, appear to be native speakers.



Noah Webster is long dead and doesn't publish dictionaries. Neither does Random House have a lock on the name.

From Wikipedia:
_Although Merriam–Webster dictionaries are descended from the original work of Noah Webster, many other dictionaries bear his name, such as those published by Random House and by John Wiley & Sons._​


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## Ann O'Rack

bluegiraffe said:


> I would be interested to know how many people know that an en dash even exists, let alone what it is for. I've certainly never heard of it, this doesn't make me some text-speaking neanderthal, nor does it mean my grammar and punctuation is so terrible I should be scorned.
> 
> I don't want to get into some terrible argument here so how about if I add a smiley face? :0)


 
I do, I do!  (Where's the smiley of me jumping up and down, waving my hand in the air?)

And I also use curly quotes deliberately, and distinguish between the curly double-quote (oh dear, should that have a hyphen or not?) and the straight mark that means "inch", as well as all sorts of other typographic niceties that look very pretty when using something like FrameMaker to format a document for printing and drive developers of assorted bits of on-screen "stuff" bananas.

As with just about everything here on WR, context is everything. So if I'm preparing something for a pretty print presentation - a brochure or similar - (that would be a pair of en-dashes, by the way, if I could type it easily in a vBulletin reply box!) I use the appropriate typography. If I'm preparing something to go in some kind of resource file for on-screen display I try to keep it as clean as possible, and if it's a project I'll be working on for some time I also capture my usage conventions in some kind of style guide. (I didn't pick my username (oh no, another potential hyphen!) without considerable thought.)


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## sdgraham

natkretep said:


> BTW, did anybody notice the en dash I used above?



But did you *really* use an en dash?

Characters cannot be transmitted over the internet except as graphic images. What shows up here is the result of how the user's browser interprets numeric values and/or encoding schemes consisting of a string of numeric values.

The character that arrived here was 96Hex (150 decimal), which my browser (Firefox) chose to display as a hyphen, which normally is two-thirds the size of an en dash.

A character of value 96Hex (150 decimal)  is not defined in ISO-8859 Latin-1, supposedly the base eight-bit character set of the Internet. The character set, adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) completely ignores em dashes and en dashes - as well as em spaces and en spaces, not to mention thin spaces (but I'd better not go there).

Microsoft does support special characters, such as ems and ens and curly quotes, including the German-style "goose feet." Given Microsoft's hegemony in the world of computing, these values have gained some traction, but they are not supported as the ISO 8859 Latin-1 standard and the curly quotes in particular are not displayed by my Firefox browser.

The vestigial typographic characters *are* supported, however, by subsequent encoding schemes and had you really inserted an en dash here on the Internet, it should have the character entity "–" 

See HERE for a complete list.

Now consider that if you are searching for "New York-London" in some document or submitting a query to make a reservation. If you are messing with en dashes instead of the ubiquitous hyphen, some programmer has to write a mountain of code to deal with the above variations - or, as is often the case, just reject it.

The point of all of this is to demonstrate the problems involved with confusing vestigial typesetting characters with hyphens in common, everyday, English-language composition.


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## LV4-26

I'm a non-native English speaker myself.
Although I'm honoured to be called an English speaker, it makes me feel like I'm an impostor. 

However, this option looks like the least bad to me. Forget about logic.


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## panjandrum

_<< A pointer, in case people don't look at post #1 when adding to this thread.
Please have a look at the comment in post #1. >>_


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## ewie

bluegiraffe said:


> I would be interested to know how many people know that an en dash even exists, let alone what it is for


I'd never _heard_ of em and en dashes until I washed up here, Blue, and I like to think I know a bit about punctuation (I got 9½ out of ten for an exercise in it circa 1971).


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## sdgraham

ewie said:


> I'd never _heard_ of em and en dashes until I washed up here, Blue, and I like to think I know a bit about punctuation (I got 9½ out of ten for an exercise in it circa 1971).



An em (or an en) is a printer's measure and it really has more to do with formatting and typesetting than it does with punctuation (in my experience). I don't even know if the rather arcane terms exist outside the United States.

I suspect that the biggest reason the computer community has adopted encoding techniques for these vestigial characters is to have the ability to commit old documents into computer memory in their original form, much as an Aramaic encoding has been developed to digitally save ancient documents such as the Christian New Testament.

There might be some die-hards who believe that since Aramaic can be written on the computer that we ought to be able to tweet in Aramaic, but I believe they are blissfully few.

I believe there's also encoding for Klingon, but we daren't go there.


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## glaslexi

I'm sure that no-one (as opposed to noone) disagrees that clarity is the key to choice of spelling/punctuation, and that for that reason alone non-native is preferable.

As far as dictionaries are concerned, the vast majority of them, certainly OED, Collins, Chambers, and I assume the AE dictionaries too are corpus-based. They aren't just choosing randomly whether to hyphenate or not, but basing their choices on corpus evidence.


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## frostypotter

Copyright said:


> _<< Moderator Note.
> This thread about the punctuation for non(-)native stays on topic for ~10 posts.
> Then it begins to consider different kinds of dash and their usage.
> Both topics are interesting, and both deserve a good airing in threads of their own.
> Unfortunately, it is not possible (for me anyway) to unpick the interwoven topics in order to create two helpful threads, so they are just going to have to remain as they are.
> A heartfelt plea, though:
> Please, everyone, remember what you all know, that WordReference threads are expected to keep to the topic as set out in the first post.
> If another topic comes to mind, please DO NOT introduce it and de-rail (or should that be derail) the thread.
> Start a new thread and, if appropriate, included reference to the old in the new and post a link to the new in the old.
> Indeed, please keep in mind forum rule #2:Stay on the topic of the first post in each thread.
> Ask about only one topic in each thread. If you have more than one  question, open a thread for each.
> If you wish to talk about a related subject that is different from the question  posed in the first post of the thread, open a new thread.​To facilitate the confused, I have changed the title of the thread to include the additional topics.
> Please do not introduce any more topics, else I may have to change the thread title to "English", or worse.
> 
> panjandrum
> (Moderator) >>_
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've used Search and found 497 threads with "non native english speaker" somewhere in the body, and 0 threads with anything similar in the Subject, so I'd like to ask:
> *What punctuation do we like for "non native English speaker"?*
> 
> I Googled and was stunned to find "nonnative English speaker."
> 
> I'm inclined  to go for "non-native English speaker."
> 
> I see it unhyphenated, as "non native English speaker," which I don't like at all.
> 
> And I wouldn't be surprised to find that some prefer "non-native-English speaker," although that construction might actually require an en dash somewhere.
> 
> But I would really like second, third, fourth and more opinions from the members here. Thanks very much.



"Non-native English speaker" seems to be the correct version to me. "English speaker" is common enough that it doesn't need to be hyphenated in any sense. I'm inclined to use the "non-" as a hyphenated prefix, especially when the modified word begins with an "n" as in "native," as it seems clearer and easier to read.


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## Copyright

Now that panjandrum has kindly allowed us to talk about en dashes legally, no one wants to.  And I don’t need to either, but I'll say a few words anyway.  

  I was surprised to read that some people think en and em dashes are arcane or unneeded. And I was especially surprised that their reason for eschewing them is that they’ve never heard of them before.

  It doesn’t really matter if you’ve never known the name of them – just look in any magazine or newspaper and you’ll see dashes. Discovering that they have a first name, em, doesn’t make them any more foreign or any less useful as punctuation. Same with en dashes.

  If you don’t want to use them, that’s fine, but I find them useful markers in my reading. It took me less than 30 seconds to find “Fitzgerald used a Civil War–era sedition statute to win the conviction of blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman” in _Time _magazine, November 7, page 29, first column (it’s the only Time I could find lying around the office – and, no, I didn’t have to look through every issue going back that far to find it ). 

  On the other hand, in the interest of fair reporting, I didn’t see any en dashes in my 3-minute scan of _The Economist _and I noticed that they use hyphens with numbers, not en dashes.

  All in all, it doesn’t matter. En and em dashes have a reason for their existence. They're like public-toilet signs that display an icon instead of words. If you understand the icon, the sign can be useful. If you don’t, well, you don’t, but you still get through life. 

  Having said all that, let me also say that I'm talking about the printed word on paper.  I don't use en and em dashes on my websites for  the reasons mentioned in this thread... the problems aren't worth it.

I'll end with a "Cheers" to this forum and the people who make these such interesting discussions.


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## bluegiraffe

Copyright said:


> Now that panjandrum has kindly allowed us to talk about en dashes legally, no one wants to.  And I don’t need to either, but I'll say a few words anyway.
> 
> I was surprised to read that some people think en and em dashes are arcane or unneeded. And I was especially surprised that their reason for eschewing them is that they’ve never heard of them before.
> 
> It doesn’t really matter if you’ve never known the name of them – just look in any magazine or newspaper and you’ll see dashes. Discovering that they have a first name, em, doesn’t make them any more foreign or any less useful as punctuation. Same with en dashes.


 
I have been reading this thread from the beginning and it has just occured to me - I don't actually know what an en/em dash is for!  (that was just a dash I used, call it what you like).  Neither can I really see any difference in dashes in text - if they are so useful, where should I be using them?  (that was another dash).


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## Copyright

bluegiraffe said:


> I have been reading this thread from the beginning and it has just occured to me - I don't actually know what an en/em dash is for!  (that was just a dash I used, call it what you like).  Neither can I really see any difference in dashes in text - if they are so useful, where should I be using them?  (that was another dash).



Actually, those are all hyphens, but as I said, en dashes and em dashes can be problematic on webpages, so not to worry (I know you're not).  It's on the printed page that I appreciate them.

I'm off to England in a few hours to brush up on my English, but I can give you this as a good starthttp://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/dashes.asp.

If you don't like what you see and never use them, I'll still respect you in the morning.


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## Carlito Brigante

Hello, everyone.

I see that there are already many useful answers here than the one I will provide now.

My native language is not English, but I have always thought I have a pretty good natural ''feel'' of it. What I want to say is that when I saw _nonnative_ I was a bit confused because written without a hyphen it makes me stress the wrong syllable. If you understand what I mean, that is.

Perhaps it is just a matter of habit, I don't know. It sounds a lot more natural for me when written with a hyphen.

I felt it would be acceptable to give my opinion on this topic.

Carlito


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## sdgraham

bluegiraffe said:


> Neither can I really see any difference in dashes in text - if they are so useful, where should I be using them?



What do you mean by "text?" a computer screen or the printed page? 

The only difference is width. An em is the width of the letter 'M" as previously mentioned.

An en is the width of the letter 'N,' which generally half the width of an em.

A hyphen is generally two-thirds of the width of an en.

Here's the kicker: If you're using a mono-spaced computer font, e.g. Courier, on a computer or a typewriter, em and en dashes cannot exist. 

We in the business of typesetting and computers call that a "presentation" issue rather than "punctuation," at least in choosing the length of your dash. 

In other words, it's just like choosing a bold-face font, i.e. use em- and en-dashes where you feel like it - if you can generate them. You do run the risk that your text might be incompatible with somebody else's software if you are exchanging documents. 

Remember that the pre-computer world did quite nicely without em- and en dashes when the only people able to insert them in printed text were human typesetters who plucked movable type from fonts (the original meaning, i.e. trays of type.)

Copyright wrote: 





> I was surprised to read that some people think en and em dashes are arcane or unneeded.


Given the number of learned people on this list who have admitted they never have heard of the characters, not to mention having survived quite nicely without them, I rest my case.

QED


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## natkretep

bluegiraffe said:


> I have been reading this thread from the beginning and it has just occured to me - I don't actually know what an en/em dash is for!  (that was just a dash I used, call it what you like).  Neither can I really see any difference in dashes in text - if they are so useful, where should I be using them?  (that was another dash).



I'm just trying to see if indeed the difference is visible: here they are arranged one above the other (the hyphen, the en dash and the em dash)
-
–
—

Not terribly useful, but if you're used to well edited, printed texts, using a hyphen for a dash will just look homespun.


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## frostypotter

Copyright said:


> Actually, those are all hyphens, but as I said, en dashes and em dashes can be problematic on webpages, so not to worry (I know you're not).  It's on the printed page that I appreciate them.



Actually those aren't really anything. They are hyphens insofar as how they look, but they function like em-dashes. And another thing...



> Given the number of learned people on this list who have admitted they never have heard of the characters, not to mention having survived quite nicely without them, I rest my case.



Just because they have never heard about en- or em-dashes, doesn't mean they haven't seen or used them. The en-dash used above in "en-" is a perfect example. While the en-dash seems to be more like a souped-up hyphen, I think the em-dash actually has useful purposes--I know I use it a lot. To take it out of the type-set is one thing since there are ways around it, but to take it out of the language is quite another.


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## sdgraham

frostypotter said:


> Just because they have never heard about en- or em-dashes, doesn't mean they haven't seen or used them. The en-dash used above in "en-" is a perfect example. While the en-dash seems to be more like a suped souped-up hyphen, I think the em-dash actually has useful purposes--I know I use it a lot. To take it out of the type-set is one thing since there are ways around it, but to take it out of the language is quite another.



I have no quarrel with those who feel compelled through nostalgia or other influences to use these vestigial artifacts. The problem arises when their messianic zeal causes learners (or native speakers), such as bluegiraffe's post above, to somehow feel inadequate because they never heard of them and haven't been using them.

I have no desire to remove the terms from the language any more than I want to remove "slide rule" or the soon-to-disappear "incandescent light bulb."

Although I spent much of my working life dealing with legacy typesetting issues, I have few fond memories thereof.


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## ewie

Carlito Brigante said:


> Hello, everyone.
> 
> I see that there are already many useful answers here than the one I will provide now.
> 
> My native language is not English, but I have always thought I have a pretty good natural ''feel'' of it. What I want to say is that when I saw _nonnative_ I was a bit confused because written without a hyphen it makes me stress the wrong syllable. If you understand what I mean, that is.
> 
> Perhaps it is just a matter of habit, I don't know. It sounds a lot more natural for me when written with a hyphen.
> 
> I felt it would be acceptable to give my opinion on this topic.
> 
> Carlito


_All_ opinions are welcome, Carlito  Mine happens to be the same as yours: I wouldn't dream of writing _nonnative_ because if I saw it, I'd read it as /'nɒnətɪv/ at first, which sounds to me like it should be a Finnish noun case (but isn't).


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## bluegiraffe

frostypotter said:


> While the en-dash seems to be more like a souped-up hyphen, I think the em-dash actually has useful purposes--I know I use it a lot. To take it out of the type-set is one thing since there are ways around it, but to take it out of the language is quite another.


 
From what I've read above, I get the impression the em and en dash are just different length hyphens with different names.  Therefore it's not *in* the language to take out!  It just to do with typing and print.  It doesn't change the meaning of words or sentences.  Have I got this all wrong??  That's not an invitation to patronise me by the way.


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## sdgraham

bluegiraffe said:


> From what I've read above, I get the impression the em and en dash are just different length hyphens with different names.  Therefore it's not *in* the language to take out!  It just to do with typing and print.  It doesn't change the meaning of words or sentences.  Have I got this all wrong??



You are correct in that they don't  change the meaning of anything. If they did, you wouldn't be able to write anything by hand or with a typewriter. It's purely stylistic. Remember, the _primary_ use of these characters was to line up columns of digits, such as stock market prices, using hard type. (There were also em spaces, en spaces, thin spaces - as well as en leaders and em leaders, i.e. those little dots that lead the reader's eyes to something in a column to the right.)

If they were *really* necessary, the characters would probably have been included in the first creation of seven and eight-bit computer character set repertoires, e.g. ASCII, ISO 646, ISO 8859-Latin 1, etc.

(North American newspapers solved that problem by declaring, for example, that the ISO underscore (_) would be treated as an EM-Dash)

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with keeping the _terms_ in the language, or, for that matter having a character for those who believe that "size (of a dash) really does matter", even though the need for such characters has long since disappeared.


> That's not an invitation to patronise me by the way.


Curmudgeons never patronize.


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## Ann O'Rack

bluegiraffe said:


> From what I've read above, I get the impression the em and en dash are just different length hyphens with different names. Therefore it's not *in* the language to take out! It just to do with typing and print. It doesn't change the meaning of words or sentences. Have I got this all wrong?? That's not an invitation to patronise me by the way.


 
I disagree, I see them as different forms of punctuation that are used in different contexts. But then, I'm more bothered about correct typography than many.

For example, a US English writer might use two hyphens together between words--like this--to indicate not a joining (the normal use for a hyphen) but a separation. In this instance I would use an em-dash, and that is what you would normally find if you were reading a novel. In Spanish, speech is often introduced with an em-dash at the beginning of the line, rather than the quote marks an English speaker would use - I don't think just a hyphen would be sufficient.

Does that mean that an em-dash is a different length hyphen or a different punctuation mark? I'll leave you to decide (and perhaps you can let me know what you come up with because I've gone and confused myself with the possibility, when I used to be certain they were three different marks!)


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## Ann O'Rack

sdgraham said:


> You are correct in that they don't change the meaning of anything. If they did, you wouldn't be able to write anything by hand or with a typewriter. It's purely stylistic. Remember, the _primary_ use of these characters was to line up columns of digits, such as stock market prices, using hard type.
> 
> On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with keeping the _terms_ in the language, or, for that matter having a character for those who believe that "size (of a dash) really does matter", even though the need for such characters has long since disappeared.
> 
> Curmudgeons never patronize.


 
Would you mind explaining where you got the idea for the _primary_ use of em-dashes, en-dashes and hyphens is to line up columns of digits using hard type. I find that very surprising and would be interested to learn more.


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## sdgraham

Ann O'Rack said:


> Would you mind explaining where you got the idea for the _primary_ use of em-dashes, en-dashes and hyphens is to line up columns of digits using hard type. I find that very surprising and would be interested to learn more.



The short answer is "28 years with America's and arguably the world's largest news agency, a.k.a. 'wire service.' in both editorial and technical capacities."

The long answer is HERE.


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## frostypotter

I'm still a proponent for maintaining the en- and em-dashes, regardless of whether "they are in the language" or not. They are used often enough in news and novels alike that they are still relevant. If we want to go Kerouac on the language and take everything out except the period, I think we would find ourselves muddled by text. The dashes serve the purpose to clarify text and are not easily replaced by other punctuation. For that reason, I'm sticking to my guns on this one.


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## Ann O'Rack

sdgraham said:


> The short answer is "28 years with America's and arguably the world's largest news agency, a.k.a. 'wire service.' in both editorial and technical capacities."
> 
> The long answer is HERE.


 
Thank you, that makes really interesting reading. It's amazing just how much information you can pick up on a forum like this!

But whatever their usage, I still think of them as different marks rather than just different representations of the same mark, the same way that "double quotes" and 'single quotes' are different. (And I've just noticed you've used both single and double quotes in the bit I've quoted!)


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## natkretep

Thanks, sdgraham, for your piece, but I'm with Ann O'Rack here. It seems to me the fact that there are two names in English – the dash and the hyphen – confirms that these are not just allographs (different ways of writing the same thing). (For example, capital letters and lower-case letters are allographs.) The fact that there are many who type (using a computer keyboard) use the same same symbol is just an indication of the limitation of the keyboard - a little bit like how in the days of the early typewriter, the lower-case <l> had to double up as the digit <1>, or the capital <O> had to double up as the digit <0>, or the exclamation mark had to be formed by a superimposed <'> and <.> (I never did typesetting, but I certainly knew the typewriter, and it took me a while to give up other habits like using double spacing after a full stop.)


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## sdgraham

natkretep said:


> Thanks, sdgraham, for your piece, but I'm with Ann O'Rack here.



OK, but remember that we got into this morass by considering the assertion that "non-native" should be separated by an en dash rather than a hyphen, which confused some native and some non-native speakers alike and is the basis for all of this.

Could we bring it back to this context?


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## cuchuflete

Ann O'Rack said:


> Would you mind explaining where you got the idea for the _primary_ use of em-dashes, en-dashes and hyphens is to line up columns of digits using hard type. I find that very surprising and would be interested to learn more.



Before giving all the non-natives, nonnatives (Glurp!) and non natives their due, I feel the need, as a former typesetter, to agree with sdg's comments here and in the linked essay
_as far as they address the use of dashes in the journalism trade.  _I wouldn't want that agreement to be taken to mean that the only use of the em and en dashes was in newspapers and press composition.  

I bought my first platen press when I was about eleven years old. It came with a huge wooden case, with fourteen California job cases filled with hand-cast fonts from about 1860, together with some wood display type.  All of the fonts included en and em dashes.  These were standard characters for metal type fonts in the latter half of the 19th century, and most job printers did not print newspapers.  One may assume, reasonably I think, that these "points" were used for other things.

Here is Theodore Low De Vinne, of the De Vinne Press, a famed U.S. printer and typographic expert of the late 19th and early 20th century:

Source: 
*CORRECT COMPOSITION*

THE PRACTICE OF TYPOGRAPHY 

CORRECT COMPOSITION 

A TREATISE ON SPELLING 

ABBREVIATIONS, THE COMPOUNDING AND 

DIVISION OF WORDS, THE PROPER USE OF FIGURES 

AND NUMERALS, ITALIC AND CAPITAL 

LETTERS, NOTES, ETC. 
​ WITH 

OBSERVATIONS _ON _PUNCTUATION 
AND PROOF-READING 

BY ​ THEODORE LOW DE VINNE, A.M. 

The Century Company, 1901.



> The dash was much used by authors of a century or more ago to express in one sentence great contrariety of action, as appears in this extract from Sterne, which is a close reprint of his punctuation:
> 
> 
> Nature instantly ebbed again ;—the film returned to its place;—the pulse fluttered,—stopped,— went on,— throbbed,— stopped again,— moved, stopped, Shall I go on ? No.
> 
> _[...]
> 
> _The dash is also used to separate the repetition or different amplifications of the same statement.
> 
> 
> The infinite importance of what he has to do — the goading conviction that it must be done — the dreadful combination in his mind of both the necessity and the incapacity — the despair of crowding the concerns of an age into a moment^-the impossibility of beginning a repentance which should have been completed — of setting about a peace 272 _Dashes for side-headings_


​I've browsed my library, and found em dashes in literary works printed in Spain, England and the United States in the early 19th century.  More looking may produce still earlier examples.  

I mention these uses of the longer dashes not to contradict Mr. Graham, but to supplement our awareness of the early uses of these typographic elements.


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## sdgraham

At the risk of becoming tiresome, I realize that I really haven't pointed out that I have no quarrel with _*dashes*_, which are a useful typographical tool in the publishing industry and for which natkretep seems to be arguing. 
That is to say that I fully agree that a character positioned like a hyphen and wider and perhaps thicker is valuable.

(Given today's computerized composition systems, publishers can easily make horizontal lines as long or as short as they please.)

My point of contention is with those who insist upon dealing with *EN*-dashes and *EM*-dashes, which are relics of a bygone era - and those who argue that they are an essential part of the language and people, even learners, who cannot deal with them are somehow inferior.

To you native speakers: How many of *you* learned about these typesetting characters in English class at any level of schooling in our beloved language?  - or did you just deal with plain old "dashes," if at all.

Or esteemed and learned Ewie already has said they're new to him.





ewie said:


> I'd never _heard_ of em and en dashes until I washed up here, Blue, and I like to think I know a bit about punctuation (I got 9½ out of ten for an exercise in it circa 1971).




I certainly didn't learn about ems and ens and such in school. (Aficionados of crossword puzzles are probably familiar with ems and ens, however) 

Does this forum support polling, by the way?

Now for the proof that em dashes and en dashes probably no longer exist.

Historically, an em dash is the width of an 'M" and an 'en dash" is the width of an 'N.'

So, I composed a string of 10 'M' characters between two hyphens, followed by a string of 10 "em dashes" between two colons, using the HTML character entity reference.

So, theoretically, the lines should be the same length. Are they the same length on your computer?  They certainly are *not* on mine.

-MMMMMMMMMM-
 :——————————:

 I tried the same experiment with 'N' characters and 'N' dashes. To wit:

  -NNNNNNNNNN-
 :––––––––––:

 Same result.

 Moreover, historically, an em dash should be twice the width of an "en dash."

 A:——————————:
B:––––––––––:

 Does A seem twice the width of B to you? Not on my computer.

 My operating system and fonts are from Microsoft and as such, it is clear that Microsoft supports the em dash and en dash in name only.

 Given the empirical evidence, can one _really_ say that since Microsoft built it, we will come? 

If we want to talk about dashes, that's fine with me. It's even OK with me if we talk about short dashes vs long dashes, but please, let us leave the references to arcane and anachronistic typesetting characters rotting in the dung heap of publishing history, particularly since their existence, at least in the world of Microsoft,  is a sham.


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## panjandrum

I use dashes from time to time (... rather more frequently than I expect I should).
Frankly, I don't give a monkey's whether they are called em-dashes or en-dashes or pee-dashes or ex-dashes.  They are dashes, and that seems to be all I need to know.  I have never had any difficulty in writing them, and to the best of my knowledge no one has had any bother reading anything of mine that contained them.
To me, the conversation about dashes is a bit like a conversation about the constituents of ink.  Interesting to ink technologists but irrelevant for most practical purposes.
Sorry to offend dashophiles.


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## Ann O'Rack

I would like to point out that I didn't say I was _right_ in my thinking, just that that's what I tend to think, without any basis for doing so! 

But in summary what I think I'm getting from those in the know (sdg and cuchie) is that the hyphen and the dash (however long it is!) are two different bits of punctuation because they do different jobs, but the difference between the en-dash and the em-dash are just visual niceties.

Did I get that about right?


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## natkretep

sdgraham said:


> At the risk of becoming tiresome, I realize that I really haven't pointed out that I have no quarrel with _*dashes*_, which are a useful typographical tool in the publishing industry and for which natkretep seems to be arguing.



My only point was that we distinguish between hyphens and dashes in punctuation. I agree that en- and em-dashes are not part of what a user of English needs to know: they just need to know that dashes and hyphens are different punctuation marks and that they serve different functions. (Which is Ann O'Rack's point above as well.)

As for 'non-native', if I spelt out the word, I would say 'hyphen' rather than 'dash', so with reference to this context, I'm actually in agreement with sdgraham.


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## cuchuflete

Ann O'Rack said:


> ... the hyphen and the dash (however long it is!) are two different bits of punctuation because they do different jobs,   but the difference between the en-dash and the em-dash are just visual niceties.
> 
> Did I get that about right?



About right?  Ayup!  I might have phrased it a tad differently:  "...but the difference between the en dash and the em dash_* is* just a visual one."  

I suggest hyphenating non-natives, rather than dashing them.  It's a matter of courtesy and kindness, really.  Dashing should be reserved for politicians, horse thieves, and prescriptivists.  
_


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## Ann O'Rack

cuchuflete said:


> About right? Ayup! I might have phrased it a tad differently: "...but the difference between the en dash and the em dash_* is* just a visual one." _
> 
> _I suggest hyphenating non-natives, rather than dashing them. It's a matter of courtesy and kindness, really. Dashing should be reserved for politicians, horse thieves, and prescriptivists. _


 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You just got the benefit of speech (which isn't usually captured for posterity - and I can't even go in and edit it because you've quoted it!  ) because I started a sentence with one thought but progressed to another seemlessly without finishing the first one. 

You might find a few hopes get subjected to the same treatment as horse thieves too!


----------

