![]() ![]() ![]() Which version of Smith’s sentence do you prefer? The New Yorker doesn’t do en dashes.‡ Book publishers, on the other hand, generally do.** Building Bridges These en dashes in lieu of spaced hyphens are also pure Chicago style (see CMOS 6.78). The story is divided into sections that are “scored” like a game of badminton: the headings “0 ‑ 1,” “0 ‑ 2,”. This en dash is pure Chicago style.Īnd just to be thorough, there are twenty-one additional en dashes in the book that aren’t in the magazine. The hyphen in the magazine (“faux-Louis XVI console”) has become an en dash in the book (“faux–Louis XVI console”). The two versions differ in one and only one way. In the slim drawer of a faux–Louis XVI console, in the entrance hall of the Derawals’ primary residence, one can find a stockpile of guest passes. Now here’s the same sentence as published on page 470 of The Best American Magazine Writing 2014, an anthology compiled by Sid Holt for the American Society of Magazine Editors (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014): In the slim drawer of a faux-Louis XVI console, in the entrance hall of the Derawals’ primary residence, one can find a stockpile of guest passes. Let’s look at two versions of a sentence written by Smith in a story called “The Embassy of Cambodia.” First, here’s the version from the New Yorker, where the story was first published (in the issue of that magazine dated February 11 and 18, 2013): A Tale of Two Versionsīest-selling author Zadie Smith has had a number of essays and stories published in the New Yorker, where they are easy to search and analyze for en dashes-or their absence.† Some of these pieces have in turn been published elsewhere, and the differences can tell us something about the en dash. And that’s exactly why editors like it so much. This use of the en dash is at the same time more subtle and less common than its use in number ranges. Another example would be “pre–Civil War elections.” The idea is that the en dash ties “Chicago” not just with “York” but with “New York.” It literally bridges the space between words. That example also suggests a relationship-freight traffic between New York and Chicago-but the stated rationale for the example was the open compound. What we’re looking for is the more elusive case of the en dash with an open compound.* En Dashes with Open CompoundsĬMOS, in its 1906 first edition, specified an en dash in place of a hyphen not only in ranges but also in the case of a compound adjective before the noun “where one of the components contains more than one word” (¶ 167): And like en dashes in number ranges, these alternative dashes are common. In Chicago style, the em dash-with no space on either side-is preferred.īut anyone can spot an ordinary dash. In contemporary British style, the en dash – with space before and after, as in this sentence – may be used as an ordinary dash, or what’s sometimes called a parentheses dash. This use of the en dash, as a longer and more visible hyphen, is both practical and aesthetic: “123–24” is easier to read than “123‑24.” For most book publishers and many others, this use remains standard. One of the earliest mentions of the mark in the Oxford English Dictionary, under “en, n.,” cites the original 1893 edition of Hart’s Rules, the in-house style guide for Oxford University Press:Įn rules are to be used in such cases as 1880–1, and not hyphens or em rules. The en dash was once used almost exclusively as a shorthand for “to,” as in number ranges. It’s longer than a hyphen but typically about half the length of an em dash, which was traditionally defined as the width of the letter M in a given font at a given size: The en dash, also called an en rule, gets its name from the letter N. ![]()
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