At 3:20 PM +0200 7/21/12, SN jef chippewa wrote: > >interesting is that when the hyphen is used where an m-dash should >normally be used, there is ALWAYS a space (of course helps >distinguish from compound words), and i don't recall seeing the >shortcut (for digital communications where the m-dash might not be >recognized by a server / email programme) of the double-hyphen >without spaces surrounding it.
The use of the double hyphen (without spaces) to represent an m-dash goes back to typewriter practice, when a hyphen and an underscore were available on the standard keyboard but the m-dash did not, and most of us never realized that it existed. (Remember typewriters?!!!!) And in fact the m-dash still doesn't have a key on computer keyboards, but has to be accessed in an alternate way. HTML still doesn't seem to recognize an m-dash. The typewriter keyboard (at least the American ones on which I learned to type in about 1950) lacked a LOT of characters that were common in typesetting, including italics, boldface, and almost all diacritical marks. The number "1" was typed as a lower-case "L," and the "zero" was an upper-case "O." Italics were indicated by underscoring. And trying to imitate boldface was a real kludge. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
