ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

And I'd use "vodka and orange-juice concoction" (hyphen in "orange juice" even though it doesn't normally need one).

This is the in the UK, and I'd never use -- I've never seen -- an N-dash used in that way.

I would never use a sentence used in this way either.

"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)."

the post--World War II years

I am skeptical of those who say they've never seen en dashes used this way, since it is sensible Chicago style, and it used by many major publications and in many common texts.

I've never used Chicago style. The style guide at my current job recommends the en-dash in compound nouns, at least one element of which is a group of words (such as "a New York--Seattle flight"), and also in compound adjectives of similar construction (such as "German--Scots-Irish ancestry"). It's not very clear on adjective-participle constructions like "red wine-based sauce."

Sure, J, but I'm saying I KNOW you've read stuff like the New York Review of Books, the Village Voice, or Slate, three out of a whole bunch of publications that use en dashes that way (IIRC).

oh, that chicago-style thing is joyous. i'd forgotten all about it, and my incredibly short-lived attempt to introduce it into scottish journalism. absolutely wonderful. i envy you, nabisco, being able to use it.

given that it's not a convention with which UK readers would be familiar, however, the correct answer is #4, and i'll fight anyone who disagrees. to the death.

there's a subeditors' group on facebook now. joy.

looks like somebody around here's using en dashes....

chicago style

Actually, I am UNABLE in my work capacity to use those disambiguating en dashes, which kinda saddens me.

Apparently there are now books on typography that advocate throwing out the em dash entirely, and using spaced-out ens for dashes. Which makes me want to barf, and which I suspect is subtly influenced by the fact that word turns a spaced-out "--" into an en.

word = microsoft Word

Nabisco, I feel like maybe I've mentioned this to you before, but can you do something-- talk to Scott or whatever-- about Pitchfork's ghastly habit of using double hyphens as in this sentence, with only one space instead of two? I mean, I'm OK with substituting double hyphens for em-dashes when it comes to web journalism, but the single space really drives me nuts. At least they seem to be consistent about it.

Check out this masterpiece of headline subbing (click thru for story)
)
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=337901&cc=5739

And I'd use "vodka and orange-juice concoction" (hyphen in "orange juice" even though it doesn't normally need one).

that's just madness.

i've literally never heard of this chicago-style en dash thing in my life! i don't think it exists in the uk, as grimly said.

mind you, grimly also disagreed with me - so a fight to the death it is!

(where's this subs' facebook group then?)

Up there with "Keegan fills Schmeichel's gap with Seaman"

Also "Celtic need Fanni to tighten up"

xpost

that's just madness.

it is, although i bet we'd disagree as to why ;)

(where's this subs' facebook group then?)

it's findable. a good sub can find anything ;)

(a really good sub wouldn't use the same emoticon twice in succession, mind. probably.)

J, I've brought that up with them before, and Ryan had an explanation for why he chose the style -- something about certain browsers breaking and wrapping lines in the middle of the two-hyphen dash? Like:

and this album -- which is really ridiculously awesome -
- is now available

I'm not clear on whether that's a style he adopted back in the day, under different browser conditions, and just sticks with now, or if that's still a concern.

Oh, that kind of makes sense, actually.

how hard is it to search "--" and replace with —, sheesh

note that comma is grammatical, not htmlical

So hella easy on a mac, just alt+hyphen. That is really the only thing I like about Macs – easy makings of the symbols & more arcane punctuation marks & c.

yeah! if it's gonna be on a web page though you got to use those codes.

one in five 18- to 29-year-old buyers failed to carry out any basic assessments

how do we feel about they hyphen after the 18?

It displeases me

it's not wrong though is it? i've had arguments about this before but i can't find any diktat either way.

hyphen's fine where it is

Yeah, that hyphen seems pretty standard to me.

it's grammatically correct and i like it. but, as N,B&S says, it upsets some people.

fuck them ;)

hahaha how about "one in five 18–29-year-old buyers"

good article about esing em and en dashes in the web here - http://www.alistapart.com/stories/emen/

probably an easy one, but...from CNN:

Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure Monday, causing him to fall at his summer home off the coast of Maine, the Supreme Court said.

could a comma after "fall" or "home" save Roberts from a watery grave? or is this correct, and the fall/off coincidence just seems to make it more ambiguous than it is?

I think it's OK as is, since the phrases are arranged in a logical sequence.

E.g., "causing him to fall" --> Where did he fall? --> "at his summer home" --> Where is his summer home? -- "off the coast of Maine"

If he really fell off the coast of Maine, it'd make more sense to say "causing him to fall off the coast of Maine at his summer home" or "causing him to fall, at his summer home, off the coast of Maine."

I have a question. Why do we use the apostrophe-S in a phrase like "A friend of Nabisco's lent me a dollar to buy a popsicle"? It makes sense in "Nabisco's friend lent me..." since it's functioning as a possessive, but when the word "of" is already there designating possession, there doesn't seem to be the need to use the apostrophe, too.

This was in last week's New Yorker, in that article about the woman with the bionic arm. Supposedly, a "friend of Mitchell's had heard about" the new scientific advances in prosthetics.

We just do. I think it's got something to do with the 'a' at the start. If you said "Nabiso's friend lent me..." then that implies we know which friend you're talking about (perhaps because Nabisco only has one friend), so that's not very useful when it's not a specified friend. You couldn't say "a Nabisco's friend lent me..."

If you use pronouns/possessives it's quite odd, too. You could say "your friend", but not "a your friend", or "a friend of you", or even "a friend of your", it would have to be "a friend of yours".

I've not heard of anyone falling off a coast before. Off a cliff, sure, but off a coast, nope. So I think the sentence is fine.

But why couldn't you just say "A friend of Nabisco lent me..."?

It's odd and inexplicable, but for some reason "A friend of Nabisco" sounds stilted and archaic (or just yodarrific) whereas "A friend of Nabisco's" does not. To my tin ear, anyway.

Yeah, I agree it sounds odd, I just wondered if there was some reason for doing it that way that I wasn't aware of.

I'm going to reach really far up my ass for this one:

The phrase "A friend of Nabisco" has an oratorical ring to it, along the lines of "A statesman, a patriot, and a friend of the common man." As if "Nabisco" is a (possibly grandiose) abstract entity. Adding the 's demotes "Nabisco" to the status of human individual.

This doesn't answer the question of "Is there grammatical justification for the practice of adding an apostrophe-s to a noun that's already been designated as possessive by the word 'of'?" Also it's a complete fabrication. But it has the ring of truth.

"A friend of Dorothy"

If you're starting a sentence with a letter that's lowercase by nomenclature, eg, "n-3 fatty acids," do you cap the N?

my standard fudge would be to try and reorder the sentence if at all possible, so you don't start with it

if not possible, then no, don't cap the n: if nomenclature is important enough that you have to ask, it's important enough to take precedence, despite weird-lookingness

... would be my personal answer and attitude

In other words, the bell hooks/k.d. lang problem. I've noticed that the New York Times ignores these idiosyncratic spellings and just goes with Bell Hooks and K.D. Lang (presumably to avoid this predicament), but in this Austin Chronicle article about the former, the writer starts sentences with "hooks" several times.

Knowing nothing about the subject, I'm curious: does capping the N in "n-3 fatty acids" mean something different?

I just proof the damn stuff, but I don't think so.

The AMA manual, since stuff this specific, isn't indexed, is frequently no help at all.

haha i have subbed bell hooks -- she is just the WORST stylist, and throws tantrums when you try and suggest improvements

prob w.having caps and non-caps in formulae would be exactly that someone would read it and think "is this meant to mean something different?" -- ie it introduces confusion and doubt, hence avoid if possible

(i can think of plenty of mathematical contexts where it WOULD change the meaning)

It might confuse an uninformed reader to see a sentence like, "The next lecture in the series will feature bell hooks."

Luckily, E.E. Cummings poses no such problems.

i once had to stomp on a gallery who insisted for the catalogue we were producing that we put TWO spaces between the "The" and whatever their poncey name was -- i told em that the computers wouldn't let us, it automatically corrected and they would have to lump it (= a lie, obv)

they went out of business so the problem disappeared

"a pair of legal analysts say(s)"