I just realized that I use the phrase “goddamn it” as a replacement for the word “so,” when “so” is meant in its conjunctive aspect to introduce a statement that is followed by a defensive comment, a comment that I often–though not always–offer in the frame of a question.
As in the sentence, “You may be right. Maybe she shouldn’t just sit inside and catch up on General Hospital — not unless she wants to, and goddamn it, what’s wrong with it if she wants to?”
9 Comments
kyle… - what’s the difference between using hyphens and commas? - is there a definitive grammatical reason or do you just choose to use hyphens and commas when and where you please?
I guess Kyle is too cool to answer you. Or maybe he doesn’t know the answer…?
i think he’s angry at me for continually harping on mccain… - but… - maybe i’m just paranoid… - and lonely… - and in desperate need for affection… - and annoying… - ugly… - stinky… - and a little neurotic… - lazy and dorkish with a touch of banality… - or maybe he just wants to watch me suffer and get depressed every time i come on fluid imagination to see that he hasn’t answered my question… - embarrassing me in front of all of my friends and making me feel like dirt and unworthy of responding…
or… - more likely… - he’s outside enjoying the end of the week and the weekend…
unworthy of responding? - i should have said… - unworthy of a response…
i likes to correct my mistakes… - because it’s the smort thing to do…
jesus… - i sound like a bazooka joe one liner…
kill me please…
and i’m getting the feeling that justin doesn’t want to post any comments for a while because he likes the number 700… - justin is down with the feng shui…
No hate coming your way, senor Rosen. Simply been a very busy man these last six or seven days (hence the lack of posting/commmenting here on Fluid Imagination).
First, you should know that what you’re talking about is not a “hyphen” but a “dash.” Instead of trying to come up with an explanation of my own, I’ll just quote at length from Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, the single best style guide ever written, if only because it offers and accepts no bullshit.
“Hyphen: When two or more words are combined to form a compound adjective, a hyphen is usually required. ‘He belonged to the leisure class and enjoyed leisure-class pursuits.’ ‘She entered her boat in the round-the-island race.’”
As for the dash, well, again from Strunk & White:
“Use a dash to set off an abrupt break or interruption and to announce a long appositive or summary. A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than a parentheses. … Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate.”
For the comma, we’re going to go my trusty McGraw-Hill College Handbook, 4th Edition:
“When you speak, you pause to emphasize elements of a sentence and to catch your breath. Commas show these pauses within written sentences. Commas also set off sentence elements, clarify the relation of some sentence elements to others, and serve in standard ways with dates, addresses, and other conventional forms.”
So there you go. Any questions?
gotcha…
side note… - the hyphen and the dash… - they’re the same in their physical forms but are used differently in a sentence to distinguish one from the other… - because there is only one key on the keyboard that has the hyphen/dash command… - unless you’re counting the minus sign…
it’s not like the dash is shorter or longer than the hyphen in length… - they’re the same exact size… - unless i’m missing something…
34,456 Bostwick (that’s the recaptcha words i had to type in to post a comment) - where the hell to they come with this shite?
While there is only one “key” on your keyboard for it, dashes are usually longer than hyphens.
I mean, think about it: according to your keyboard, there’s only one size letter you can type. But if you hit the “shift” button, you now have a choice of two sizes to choose from, lowercase and uppercase. The point being, using the modifier keys, there’s more options on your keyboard than the number of keys would suggest.
So you can type a hyphen using the obvious hyphen button, which looks like this: -
Or you can type a longer dash: —
The key combo to get the longer dash (which is called an “em dash”) differs depending on the application you’re using, but in Microsoft Word for Mac for example, you get an em dash by typing “CTRL+COMMAND+the minus-symbol-on-the-Number-pad”.
For a complete list of the standard keyboard shortcuts for special characters on the Mac, check out MAC KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS FOR SPECIAL CHARACTERS. I keep this page bookmarked under my “Writing Tools” category.
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As for the re-captcha stuff, I already put together a post explaining where the words come from: “Introducing ReCaptcha.”