[gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
Sherri
flmom2006 at gmail.com
Sun Oct 7 23:56:06 CDT 2007
I think it's ridiculous too and I have to always watch the cc/mL thing as
well as p.o. and b.i.d., etc. Well, I work for Gilbert Medical Transcription
Services Inc. and they are always looking for more good transcribers, so if
you're interested, let me know. They do a little bit of everything.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rose Combs" <rosecombs at qwest.net>
To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 10:23 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
Lucky for you, if they ever suggest Spheris Clarity run away screaming! It
sort of works and my boss seems to think I am wonderful because I am back to
transcribing about 130 minutes a day but, so much does not work that should.
I was a die-hard WordPerfect 5 user ten years ago but learned Word and now
love it, but I absolutely hate Spheris Clarity, that does not mean I can't
use it but I don't like one inch of it.
As to the symbols, I guess all the electronic medical record packages don't
like those symbols and if we put them in, they get stripped out either by
the programs themselves or the interfaces between the transcription module
and the EMR module.
It is still difficult for me not to write D&C or T&A, however. In fact, I
finally resorted to putting in shorthand entries so I can type them and get
what is required and not worry about the symbols. It it sort of like the
requirement to replace cc with mL, silly in my humble opinion, but, after
having to fix it enough times I put in an expansion that changes so I can
type what the doctor says and get what is required. However, if we are
talking breast implants we have to use cc so then I have to circumvent my
expansion.
Don't get me started on this dangerous abbreviations nonsense, most of it
was actually meant for written notes as I understand it but my facilities
want us to not use some of them and keeping track of what can be used and
what can't is a pain.
Rose Combs
rosecombs at qwest.net
-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Sherri
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 11:54 AM
To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
Thank you Joel. I think I got it to work with your thorough explanation,
which I sincerely appreciate. Thanks for your patience. Yes and I do
understand about the 1/3 and the symbol. They don't like us to use the
symbols in medical transcription. BTW for Rose, I still transcribe in Word.
Okay thanks again.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
If you're just in email or one of the Windows text editors like Notepad or
Wordpad, you can't create an em dash for real. Which is no big deal. You do
what you've seen me do while writing about it here-- type two dashes
together.
Now, in word, you can have the program set to automatically create a real em
dash every time you do that same thing, type two dashes one after the other.
This is set in different places in the Word options or through an item on
the Tools menu. I wrote a post explaining where it was on my own Word 2000
that I use, and said it's probably in other places in the menus and options
of later Word versions. But it's always there, one of several automatic
character features like "smart quotes" and making fractions you create by
typing, for instance, 1/3 as a typographical thing that makes it look more
like a real "one third." That's hard to explain if you've never seen
fractions in print. But anyway, all that stuff is usually in the same group
of things you turn on like that. As I said, I explained more in an earlier
post.
As for the en dash, that's just about pressing the dash key once, that's
all. This is right for hyphenating a compound word, or setting off a list
item if you want to do it that way, or a bunch of other purposes. But either
a double dash or the long em dash that Word will create for you, that's what
to type for an em dash.
Hope that helps?
purpsoes.wordtypgoraquotes" authomatic
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sherri" <flmom2006 at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
Joel and list, I appreciate the explanation and the paragraph, but answer
one thing for me, because I can't remember and maybe it's because I haven't
read everything on this thread. On the computer when typing a document,
e-mail, etc., how do i physically make an en dash and how do I physically
make an em dash?
Sherri
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
Lloyd,
that article you linked us to from the site called A List apart ,, aimed at
Web developers to encourage proper, deliberate use of dash-like characters,
may be a little more information than some of us may feel we need to know,
as the expression goes, but it's very thorough and ought to be helpful
especially to someone who's been completely unaware of these distinctions
and has suspected that dash and hyphen might just be synonyms, and that em
dash and en dash were really and terminally mysterious terms.
were,wondered what's up with A couple of the uses the article describes for
these characters are ones I left out because I was tired, do not have an
extremely methodical mind, and finally take so much for granted that I just
didn't think about them, and restricted myself to the only examples that
occurred to me when I was typing my message. But for anyone really
interested in what this stuff is all about, in terms of its typographical
meaning (and therefore the meaning these things have to the writer and the
reader) will find the one paragraph I'm referring to completely
enlightening. In fact, I'm going to select, copy and paste it below what I'm
writing here in order to isolate it from the other stuff about what the
article was concerning itself with, which was Web design in terms of
typography. That's the part that's a little geeky if such a concern might
seem out of your league or not relevant to your interest in regard to dashes
and all that stuff.
So, with thanks to Lloyd again for pointing us to this reference, here's the
paragraph wherein all these marks are explained, including the distinction
between hyphen and dash, which I omitted because the character we produce by
pressing the dash/minus key looks the same and I just didn't want to get
into it. But I did explain that it's the short line, or dash, that we use to
indicate a two-part word or term, and I simply omitted to say a "hyphenated"
word because I felt afraid of getting too profuse with my explanation. but
the article says one interesting thing on this point, which is that this
keyboard key exists in a kind of limbo where it may be officially called the
dash or minus, but what it produces visibly, so to speak, winds up defined
by its use and its positioning within text, and this creates confusion in
anyone who's thinking "so why don't they call it the dash/minus/hyphen key,
for goodness' sake? :-)
anyway, here's that paragraph. One thing to not worry about is any advice in
this article about not using, say, that dash character as a minus because it
won't fall in the right position or be correct in some other way, because
these guys are talking about really particular issues of character
production in Web text creation, as if they were printers discussing
printing issues. This is a level beyond what we do when we type text and
characters to write email messages or produce perfectly literate, legible
word processing documents. If you read that stuff and try to fathom it, it
may make your head spin trying to imagine complications that don't even
apply to most of us in our actual writing tasks, even if we're being as
responsible as we possibly can. Not to worry about such things, I suggest.
Also, note the reference to the Chicago Manual of Style. This is one of a
very few "stylebooks" that professional editors, as well as university
students writing formal papers and theses look to for guidance on all
matters of grammatical and typographical style. If you're intrested in such
"bibles," maybe there are electronic editions of them to be had somewhere,
I'm guessing maybe Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic may have things
like that in some format. But for writers out in the world, whether they're
engaged with business correspondence, quality journalism, fiction and
nonfiction, the utility of something like the Chicago Manual of Style is
moot or, at best, academic, as they say. Again, not something to worry about
as if it were a secret rule book you, as a mere mortal, weren't given a copy
of as you came into the room, so to speak. That said, these things about
dashes and hyphens and the like are real and worth knowing, the same as a
lot of grammatical rules are important to know in order to simply be a
literate writer. I'm only saying that the chicago Manual of Style is not
where to go to figure out ordinary writing problems like these, even though
it of course encompasses such issues within its purview. Sort of the way
it's really more useful to check the American Heritage dictionary or Merriam
Webster's or something, a high -quality general purpose dictionary, than to
run to the full-length edition of the Oxfored English dictionary where, for
one thing, you find mostly British usages, as well as a perspective on the
history of a word that pays more attention to its history in English writing
over the centuries than to a meaningful tracing of the word's etymology and
evolution through the history of language itself.
Ah, I just thought of a very nice online source for exploring all kinds of
grammar issues, very user friendly and screen reader accessible. It's called
grammargirl.com. Let me see if that's actually the right URL... Ggrammaramm.
Glad I checked. It's actually
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/default.aspx
All that said, here's the paragraph.
The correct use of em and en
The em dash (—) is used to indicate a sudden break in thought ("I was
thinking about writing a-what time did you say the movie started?"), a
parenthetical
statement that deserves more attention than parentheses indicate, or instead
of a colon or semicolon to link clauses. It is also used to indicate an open
range, such as from a given date with no end yet (as in "Peter Sheerin
[1969-] authored this document."), or vague dates (as a stand-in for the
last two
digits of a four-digit year).
Two adjacent em dashes (a 2-em dash) are used to indicate missing letters in
a word ("I just don't f--ing care about 3.0 browsers").
Three adjacent em dashes (a 3-em dash) are used to substitute for the
author's
name when a repeated series of works are presented in a bibliography, as
well as to indicate an entire missing word in the text.
The en dash (–) is used to indicate a range of just about anything
with numbers, including dates, numbers, game scores, and pages in any sort
of document.
It is also used instead of the word "to" or a hyphen to indicate a
connection between things, including geographic references (like the
Mason-Dixon Line)
and routes (such as the New York-Boston commuter train).
It is used to hyphenate compounds of compounds, where at least one pair is
already hyphenated (as in "Netscape 6.1 is an Open-Source-based browser.").
The
Chicago Manual of style also states that it should be used "Where one of the
components of a compound adjective contains more than one word," instead of
a hyphen (as in "Netscape 6.1 is an Open Source-based browser"). Both of
these rules are for clarity in indicating exactly what is being modified by
the
compound.
Other sources also specify the use of an en dash when referring to joint
authors, as in the "Bose-Einstein" paper. Some also prefer it to a hyphen
when
text is set in all capital letters.
Some typographers prefer to use an en dash surrounded by full spaces instead
of an em dash. Others prefer to insert hair spaces on either side of the em
dash, but this is problematic with some web browsers (see the section on
spaces for more detail).
Hyphenate This
That hyphen you can insert with the key next to the zero on your keyboard is
an ambiguous character suffering from an identity crisis. It can't decide if
it's a hyphen, a minus, or an en dash-in fact, the Unicode specification
describes it as "hyphen-minus" and defines very specific replacements for
each
of its personalities.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lloyd Rasmussen" <lras at loc.gov>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 6:34 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] The voicing of m dash
I had read about an "em" and an "en" in a braille dictionary in the
60's. But I didn't have to deal with this stuff until we moved from
typewriters to typography, in the Windows era. If you ignore some of the
geeky stuff toward the beginning, this six-year-old article about
typography on the web will add a little more information to Joel's
exposition.
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/emen/
At 10:17 PM 10/4/2007, you wrote:
>What's the difference in meaning between the two characters? I don't
>remember seeing anything about it in school in the 50's and 60's, and
>haven't heard any explanation of it since. In fact, asking sighted folks
>I know they tell me they never use it and don't understand why some
>publications do.
>
>I'd be interested to know.
Lloyd Rasmussen, Acting Head, Engineering Section
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress (202) 707-0535 <http://www.loc.gov/nls>
HOME: <http://lras.home.sprynet.com>
The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent
those of NLS.
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