[gui-talk] The voicing of m dash

Thu Oct 4 22:30:04 CDT 2007

Don't forget, you don't have to use em dashes-- and you don't even have to 
allow Word to create them! If I disliked them, I would just turn off the 
smart formatting or whatever it's called in Word. I wouldn't fool around 
with Jaws to keep it from speaking what was being tuyped. I wouldn't think 
that was very practical. I'd just not create em dashes anymore. No reason 
that shouldn't work just fine. Just don't use em dashes. Again, as before, I 
don't see the problem.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "albert griffith" <albertgriffith at sbcglobal.net>
To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash

Joel!  My hero!  I knew there had to be a reason-d'être for this character
or characters.  thank you.  I'll withdraw the contract I've had out on them
and spend the money for beer or something else useful.

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 9:40 PM
To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash

Hi,

I'm wondering what the problem is. The en dash and the em dash are
traditional printer's names for the two types of  dashes that are used, each
for a different purpose, in printed text. The en dash is a simple, short
line segment halfway up the height of the alphanumerical characters around
it. The em dash is like two en dashes joined together  to make one extra
long line segment at the same place in a line of text. The two dashes  that
are all we can produce by typing dash dash here in plain text, I don't know
about HTML or Rich text as used in formatted emails, is the primitive
version of an em dash that was all you could produce on a keyboard back in
the days of typewriters.

The short dash is used to join the two halves of a hyphenated word, and
often as a mark that either indicates a short dramatic break in the rhythm
of how something's to be read or to set off an item in a list, just as would
be done with an asterisk, or maybe a colon, for instance, if that were the
choice instead.

By contrast, the em dash is used primarily to signal a more substantial
hesitation, almost like an intake of breath before going on. It has a
purpose in writing so as to set something off, like an interjectory phrase.
For example, here I'm going to use a double dash to represent where an em
dash would be in the sentence I'll make up to demonstrate:

Uncle Jo Jo-- for that was what all we Patterson kids called him, even
though Mother said to call him Uncle Joseph-- always came by to visit after
church on Sunday, on his own as usual, as he was a confirmed bachelor. Not
that he'd been to church with the rest of us, but he loved my mother's
cooking and, it was plain to see, enjoyed the company of the kids he'd never
himself managed to have a brood of.

Now, another thing to be aware of with em dashes. When used as I used them
above, to set off a phrase that way, there's no space before either of them,
though there's a space *after* both. Again, pretending that the double
dashes are smooth,, long em dashes, it's like "Uncle Jo Jo-- for that is
what we called him, etc.-- was never exactly drunk, but not quite sober,
either. With a single (en) dash, you generally leave a space to either side
of it.

That funcctions sort of the way a brace of commas would to set something
off, but gives it a more energetic, propulsive, staccato feeling than
commas, which signal a more relaxed hesitation, would.

Now, this all of course affects the seeing reader as both syntactical and
rhythmic signals, and my explanation may strike the blind reader as
abstract, but regardless, this is how it works in the world of print. And
the very presence of the two kinds of dashes, especially the ability to
create an em dash (which you used to be able to toggle on and off in some
options menu of Word, if I recall-- is one of those features word processors
could offer so proudly once the move from DOS and its plain text characters
allowed them to offer such a character.

anyway, this Word user would be dismayed to lose his two types of dashes, or
to not be sure which one he'd just produced while typing in Word, not
remembering if he'd pressed the dash only once, or pressed it twice. Big
difference. So to me, at least, it's hardly something that's a pain in the
butt to hear, but rather just part of my writing tools, spoken for me so
that I still can use it even if I can't decipher visually what I'm typing
anymore.

Hope that's of some interest.

Actually, that's a different character than a simple dash.

Mike

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Allen Maynard
  To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
  Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 7:59 AM
  Subject: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash

  Hi, listers,

  How do you set it so Jaws will not say "M dash" when it sees a dash,
I'm
  assuming?

  I am using Jaws 8, office 2003, and Windows XP-pro.

  It says this "m dash" in Word and sometimes on web pages and it is
  annoying.

  Thanks

  Sincerely,

  Allen Maynard
  Access Technology Specialist
  Computer Services Department
  Hadley School for the Blind
  Phone:  toll-free:  800-323-4238
  Email:  allen at hadley.edu
  Web Site:  www.hadley.edu
  _______________________________________________
  gui-talk mailing list
  gui-talk at nfbnet.org
  http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk

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