Peter Ahlstrom wrote:
On Sunday, November 16, 2003, at 12:41 PM, Brian Randall wrote:
Hmm. Peter, what does the Chicago Manual of style say about proper
dash/hyphen usage? I'd offer my suggestions, but I don't actually
know....
Ack, that's twice now you've invoked my name and made reference to
Chicago while responding to a Haynie fic.
You are an authority, as far as I can tell; few others write with as
much confidence or the use of sites they can reference explaining why
things should be a specific way.
In any case, spacing around dashes should be consistent--either no
spaces or one space on each side. Two hyphens are a manuscript
substitute for the dash, and besides, the dash is not in the standard
low ASCII set and thus causes problems transferring between platforms,
the same way curly quotes do.
Ah, thank you.
But I also should mention that although Chicago is the main style
guide for many publishing companies, it is meant to be used as a style
GUIDE, not book of style LAWS. For example, when mentioning the serial
comma ("one, two, and three" vs. "one, two and three") it speaks of
"closed" and "open" punctuation styles, where the first example is
from the former and the second example is from the latter. Now, while
I can think of very good reasons to prefer the former (such as amusing
sentences like "This book is dedicated to my parents, Jesus Christ and
L. Ron Hubbard"), there are some publishing companies or publications
that prefer the latter. In addition, companies will often have a house
style guide used in addition to a general guide like Chicago, and when
the two guides disagree, the house style guide takes precedence.
Hmm.
Wish I had known that earlier. I was under the impression from your
original tone that it was a definitive article, and effectively as close
to an absolute as we had at the moment.
Many times, what matters most is internal consistency. If an author is
aware of competing styles and picks one and remains consistent in its
use, that's more important than conforming to the style guide someone
else would choose.
I fear I am the one who set you on a holy crusade against three-dot
ellipses at the ends of sentences. While Chicago does say to use four,
and many books out there do, there are also many books that do not.
For example, I just finished reading Bujold's newest, Paladin of
Souls. Three-dot ellipses are used consistently throughout, except for
on page 411, where there's an obviously erroneous four-dot ellipsis in
the middle of a sentence. And I didn't even notice until just now when
I looked back to see which style was used. Perhaps the reason that
many fiction books are not following Chicago on this point is that
Chicago's recommendations for ellipses are focused on in-text
quotations from other works or other individuals, and not on dialogue
or narration. Actually, Chicago as a whole was never really meant to
be a style guide for fiction at all. It was created with nonfiction
and scholarly writing in mind. There are some recommendations it gives
which may not really be applicable in a fiction setting. And there are
also some points which would be quite applicable to fiction upon which
Chicago is completely silent. Unfortunately, however, there isn't
really any other style guide as thorough which would be more
applicable. But that's one of the main reasons for having a
supplementary house style guide.
...well.
I blame my own overuse of ellipses.
Anyway, whether trailing ellipses have three dots or four is usually
the sort of thing I would put lower on my priority list than something
like comma use. I wouldn't remark on it unless there was some
inconsistency or it was the only pressing concern I had about the
piece. If there were other comments I had in relation to serious
questions of plot or characterization, I might save punctuation
comments for another day entirely, besides a statement like
"punctuation was inconsistent," since they would be distracting from
the main thrust of my critique.
Yeah, but like I said before; I'm not very good at C&C, so I do what
I can and hope it encourages others to do the same.
For me it's like submissions to a magazine. If I like a story enough
to publish it, I'll spend enough time to go through with a red pen and
make the page bleed. If I'm going to reject it, my comments to the
writer will focus on the reasons. And punctuation is not going to make
me reject something; if that's the worst aspect of a story, that's
something that's easily fixed.
I always felt I was a poor judge of such things. :/
Regardless, thank you for the clarifications.
Peter