Making a Point

by David Crystal

  It’s time you went home. Traditionally the default option, in which the statement is neutral with respect to the other options, conveying none of the emotional tones we find there – a simple ‘statement of fact’. But times are changing, as we’ll see.

  It’s time you went home? The addition of a questioning tone, with all the semantic consequences that this brings, which can include genuine enquiry, abrupt instruction, and uncertain suggestion. We interpret such a sentence in the light of the context in which it is used, and relate it to the tone of voice it would have if it were spoken.

  It’s time you went home! The addition of an exclamatory tone, again with all the semantic consequences that this brings, ranging from command to disbelief.

  These are the three familiar options, corresponding to the grammatical alternatives available in English, where a statement can be syntactically changed into a question (Is it time you went home), a command (Go home), and an exclamation (What a home). Because the syntax conveys the meaning in these examples, we don’t actually need punctuation to express the difference between them, though of course modern convention does require it. Yet even here there are exceptions, which I’ll discuss in the next chapter.

  The remaining three options are not usually mentioned in traditional accounts of punctuation, but they mustn’t be ignored, especially because they have become increasingly noticeable in Internet orthography:

  It’s time you went home – The addition of an abrupt tone, with a wide range of semantic consequences.

  It’s time you went home … The addition of an ambiguous tone, also with a wide range of semantic consequences.

  It’s time you went home No final punctuation mark, leaving the semantic interpretation apparently wide open.

  This last one, in particular, is likely to raise an eyebrow, for it seems to have no punctuation at all and thus to go against a thousand years of orthographic evolution. But even nothing has a value, in language, as we shall see.

  17

  Devilish dashes –

  It’s time you went home –

  I can’t prove it, but if a count could be made of all the punctuation marks used in handwriting from Anglo-Saxon times, I suspect the dash would be top of the list. It is the easiest of marks to separate units of sense, whether sentences or parts of sentences, and as a result it has had a long history of antipathy from teachers and stylists who have been concerned that, if writers rely on the dash as a mark-of-all-trades, they will never master the more discriminating uses of punctuation. Some, savouring the alliteration, called it an invention of the devil! On the other hand, as we saw in earlier chapters, it was the punctuation mark of choice for Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, among many others, and some writers (such as Edgar Allan Poe) were keen to defend it.

  The nineteenth-century radical writer William Cobbett provides an early example of antagonism. His Grammar of the English Language (1829) is written as a series of letters to his son, and in Letter 14 he cautions the young man against the dash:

  Those who have thought proper, like Mr. Lindley Murray, to place the dash amongst the grammatical points, ought to give us some rule relative to its different longitudinal dimensions in different cases. The inch, the three quarter-inch, the half-inch, the quarter-inch: these would be something determinate; but, ‘the dash,’ without measure, must be a most perilous thing for a young grammarian to handle. In short, ‘the dash’ is a cover for ignorance as to the use of points, and it can answer no other purpose.

  But even Cobbett allows that there are occasions when the dash can be useful. He grudgingly accepts it after a period ‘in crowded print, in order to save the room that would be lost by the breaks of distinct paragraphs’, adding: ‘This is another matter.’

  Judging by his remarks, Cobbett seems to have been obsessed with the physical form of the dash, rather than its function. And indeed, printers have had to deal with this point, in order to avoid confusion with the dash-like hyphen. During the nineteenth century, the terminology of en and em became established as ways of measuring the amount of printed matter in a line of type. An en was a block of metal type that was the width of the letter N; an em was the width of the letter M. Printers would talk of an ‘en space’ or an ‘em rule’, and describe a desired space on a page as having the width of ‘three ems’, and so on.

  When used for the dash, it motivated two lengths that came to have different linguistic functions. The en dash developed three main uses.

  It marks specific ranges in dates, times, distances, and numbers: January–March, 3–5 pm, London–Holyhead, Chapters 16–18. It is also used for open-ended ranges, as in the age-span of a not-yet-dead personality (1963–). Mnemonic: the dash can be read as to (or through in US English). (But teachers who use this mnemonic must point out that it’s important not to mix conventions by writing I was there from 3–5 pm, as this can miscue the reader into thinking that a continuation is intended: from 3–5 pm until 8–9 pm.)

  It marks a coordination: a father–son relationship, the Smith–Jones series, the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the North America–Eurasia tectonic plate. Mnemonic: the dash can be read as and.

  It marks a contrasting position: 3–1 to Liverpool, the England–France match, the Ali–Frazier fight. Mnemonic: the dash can be read as versus or as opposed to.

  In informal writing, the fixed length of the en dash is replaced by a dash of indeterminate length, often making no distinction with a hyphen. In print, however, it was soon noticed that problems of legibility and ambiguity lurked behind this apparently simple mark. There’s a legibility problem if the writer wants to join hyphenated words:

  the primary-school-secondary-school distinction

  the primary-school–secondary-school distinction

  And there’s an ambiguity problem in such cases as these:

  the discovery was made by Campbell-Jones in 1962 – one person

  the discovery was made by Campbell–Jones in 1962 – two people

  a Conservative-Liberal argument – it has views from both parties

  a Conservative–Liberal argument – it is between the two parties

  It was argued that any disregard for the en dash could lead to an ambiguity. If we did not know the participants, how would we ever know if Sykes and Picot were one person or two, or even Ali and Frazier? A hyphen/en-dash distinction was soon being rigidly enforced in style guides, despite the fact that context resolved most ambiguities. The rules were being formed during a strongly prescriptive climate where any hint of ambiguity, no matter how slight, was something to be avoided at all costs.

  Things then got out of hand, and the rules became increasingly complex and artificial. It wasn’t long before wholly imaginary ambiguities were being cited to justify the distinction, such as the insistence on using an en dash after a prefix before a hyphenated word, as in non–English-speaking peoples. Most of these recommendations now seem to be generally disregarded, but some style guides do still include them, and there is a great deal of variation in what counts as ‘correct practice’.

  The en dash retained its position throughout the era of typewriting, when typists were taught to show it with a double hyphen (and a triple hyphen for em dashes), and this option has continued into modern keyboards, where there are no separate keys for en or em dashes (though the distinctions are of course encodable, as in HTML’s – and —). Other specific options have been devised to distinguish such entities as a minus sign or the kind of dash that links the parts of a telephone number. But on the whole the trend has been towards simplification. Double and triple hyphens are hardly ever seen today (an exception is in the mock-handwritten exchanges in some comic strips). And the use of the em dash has come to be widely replaced by the cleaner-looking space-en-space (as in this book):

  an example—short though it is—of an em-dash

  an example – short though it is – of a space-en-space dash

  There have also been a few specialized semantic developments in the da
sh world – notably, the swung dash (or tilde), used from the mid-twentieth century in several academic disciplines (such as mathematics and linguistics) in a range of technical senses. In dictionaries it stands for a headword (or part of a headword):

  frenzied adj marked by frenzy (the dog’s ~ barking)

  It can also mean ‘approximately’ (~50 emails) and, in a tabular list, ‘the same as above’ (as an alternative to a double inverted comma). Among the pragmatic options is its use as a visual alternative to a bullet or a straight dash in front of the items in a list. A few people have used it as an ornate alternative to a straight dash, but this usage isn’t (yet) widespread.

  Whether printed solid or spaced, the em dash has received its due share of recognition by grammarians, as it’s one of the main ways of showing an included unit in a sentence. When the inclusion is medial and short, it takes its place alongside other correlative uses of punctuation – marks that have to be used twice. The basic options are threefold:

  The editor, David Jones, said that he would make a decision soon.

  The editor (David Jones) said that he would make a decision soon.

  The editor – David Jones – said that he would make a decision soon.

  The comma option gives the two elements the same degree of semantic importance. It is also the least obtrusive, and would be the default usage when the included text is short. But if the inclusion gets longer, and contains an increasing amount of information, the semantic imbalance makes the sentence increasingly difficult to assimilate. We begin to lose a sense of its structure, especially if there are multiple commas:

  The editor, who was appointed by the board in January, with the specific role of introducing the policy to a younger, online readership, said that he would make a decision soon.

  The problem here is that the comma is being made to do several different jobs at the same time. It separates items in a list (younger, online), and it separates two clauses (January, with), as well as showing the inclusion of everything between editor and said. Inserting dashes or round brackets immediately makes the structure more transparent:

  The editor – who was appointed by the board in January, with the specific role of introducing the policy to a younger, online readership – said that he would make a decision soon.

  If the included element is an entire sentence, then the comma is immediately ruled out, and we are left with the other two options:

  The editor – he was appointed by the board in January – said that he would make a decision soon.

  The editor (he was appointed by the board in January) said that he would make a decision soon.

  What is the semantic difference between dashes and round brackets? I’ll look at the role of the latter in more detail in Chapter 30, but the essential contrast is between formal planning and informal spontaneity. In the above examples, brackets tell the reader that both points are to be noted, but the editor is the primary point. Dashes suggest to the reader that the editor’s name is of less significance to the writer. They convey an informal impression, as if the addition were an impromptu remark. They capture a dynamic movement that is missing with round brackets. As such, they are much more likely to be found, for example, in modern play scripts, as in this double instance from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead:

  I had an actor once who was condemned to hang for stealing a sheep – or a lamb, I forget which – so I got permission to have him hanged in the middle of a play – had to change the plot a bit but I thought it would be effective, you know – and you wouldn’t believe it, he just wasn’t convincing!

  Replacing the dashes by round brackets not only alters the rhythm but presents us with a curiously inconsistent tone, with the colloquial syntax clashing with the more stately punctuation.

  I had an actor once who was condemned to hang for stealing a sheep (or a lamb, I forget which) so I got permission to have him hanged in the middle of a play (had to change the plot a bit but I thought it would be effective, you know) and you wouldn’t believe it, he just wasn’t convincing!

  Dashes are the modern way. In early ages, round brackets were used for both these functions (as I’ll illustrate later).

  The association of round brackets with a well-planned text suggests that the content of the included item is closely related in meaning to what appears in the surrounding text. Conversely, if the included item is an unexpected digression, it is more likely to be found within dashes.

  The editor – am I allowed to reveal this? – said that he would make a decision soon.

  Dashes are thus the mark of choice when someone wants to convey a disjointed or chaotic series of thoughts. In this connection, probably the best dash user in English literature is Laurence Sterne, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Here’s an example in Chapter 21 of Book I:

  Pray what was that man’s name,---for I write in such a hurry, I have no time to recollect or look for it, ----- who first made the observation, ‘That there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?’

  It’s perfectly normal in Sterne to read paragraphs containing a dozen dashes, and moreover of different specific lengths, with strings of up to five hyphens being used. Here’s a short example of this style:

  My brother does it, quoth my uncle Toby, out of principle—In a family-way, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop.---Pshaw!---said my father,---’tis not worth talking of.

  This is in fact the whole of Chapter 13 of Book 2, showing the way Sterne delights in playing with literary conventions.

  The example also illustrates how the long dash (often longer than a single em) can be used to incorporate dialogue within a paragraph. Sterne uses it at the beginning of a paragraph too, anticipating the later use of the long dash instead of quotation marks to introduce a quotation or a new speaker, as I mentioned earlier (p. 94) in relation to James Joyce’s Ulysses:

  ---Well, good health, says Ned.

  ---Good health, Ned, says J.J.

  ---There he is again, says Joe.

  ---Where? says Alf.

  As a further illustration of the stylistic difference between dashes and parentheses, note what happens if the included item is left to the end of a sentence. Here it makes more sense to talk of the element being an afterthought rather than an inclusion, but the semantic function is exactly the same. It conveys an impression of spontaneous amplification. There’s an example earlier in this chapter:

  When the inclusion is medial and short, it takes its place alongside other correlative uses of punctuation – marks that have to be used twice.

  Why did I write it in this way? Because I don’t know whether my reader will be familiar with the technical use of correlative. If I don’t gloss it, I may leave some readers in the dark:

  When the inclusion is medial and short, it takes its place alongside other correlative uses of punctuation.

  But if I build it into the sentence, readers who are familiar with the term might think I’m talking down to them:

  When the inclusion is medial and short, it takes its place alongside other correlative uses of punctuation, which are marks that have to be used twice.

  I can imagine a reader thinking with irritation: ‘I know what correlative means, Crystal, you don’t have to tell me!’ The dash allows me to express a ‘take it or leave it’ effect. If you know what correlative means, ignore what follows. If you don’t, pay attention to it.

  Edgar Allan Poe made a similar point. In a Marginalia column for Graham’s Magazine (February 1848), he made a vigorous defence of the dash, inveighing against the way printers replaced dashes by a semicolon or comma – a reaction, he felt, to the excessive use of the dash by writers a few decades before. The dash, he said (defining and illustrating at the same time), ‘represents a second thought – an emendation’. And he goes on:

  The dash gives the reader a choice between two, or among three or more expressions, one of which may be more forcible than another, but all of which help out the idea. It stands, in
general, for these words – ‘or, to make my meaning more distinct.’ This force it has – and this force no other point can have; since all other points have well-understood uses quite different from this. Therefore, the dash cannot be dispensed with.

  Finally, we should note the use of the em dash to show that there’s been an interruption in a dialogue. This convention is very old. We see it in Shakespeare’s First Folio, when Hal and Poins persistently interrupt the tavern-waiter Francis (Henry IV Part 1, 2.4.40):

  There’s no standard width. The typesetter simply extends the dash to fill the rest of the line.

  So, in the light of these various uses of the em dash, why would someone end a sentence with a dash, as in It’s time you went home –? This isn’t an interruption. The speaker has decided to come to a sudden stop. Why would speakers do this? It’s a favourite novelist’s device, when characters suddenly realize that they are unwilling or unable to carry on. Perhaps they have said too much, or are too upset to continue. There are several possible interpretations, which a novelist often glosses:

  ‘It’s time you went home –’

  Martha stopped abruptly, remembering that the police were watching the house.

  The effect has a long history. Classical rhetoricians called it aposiopesis, from a Greek verb meaning ‘to keep silent’.

  An interlude about the D—

  During the eighteenth century, a long dash came to be used as a mark of supposed anonymity in newspapers, novels, letters, cartoon captions, and some public announcements. It was used for places and people where the writer wished to avoid writing a name out in full. In a novel, it might be because the actual location or person is unimportant. In a letter, the identity would be known to the reader, so the writer would be sharing some sort of joke or perhaps hinting at a sensitive issue – as when Jane Austen writes to Cassandra (8 January 1799) about ‘W—W—’s Mama’ (probably a reference to a neighbour). In newspapers, it was used as a tabloid trick to avoid a legal comeback, enabling someone to be mentioned without actually saying who they were.