[gui-talk] The voicing of m dash

[Don Moore]

I appreciate that explanation!!  Thanks.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 10:40 PM
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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