Up to now I have used the ellipsis ... to indicate pauses AND interruptions, and relied on context to guide the reader, but it was recently suggested in a crit that I use two dashes -- to indicate an interruption.

I don't know if there is a convention or a grammatic rule to cover this point, so I would appreciate your thought and comments.

Thanks

John

John, the convention is that if the speaker is interrupted you put a dash:

I saw he was putting on his boots. 'Where - ' 'Don't ask silly questions,' he said. and if the first speaker then goes on with her/his sentence, you join it up with another dash: I saw he was putting on his boots. 'Where - ' 'Don't ask silly questions,' he said. ' - did you get those boots? What did you think I was going to ask?'

When the speaker's voice trails off into a pause, you use ellipses:

'What on earth... Are you not going to the party?' or I turned round. 'I thought you... ' But he had left the room.

I have a bad habit - well, a habit - of using dashes within a speech to indicate slight hesitations or mini - um - pauses. If they come in pairs (like a sort of bracket) that's fine. But it's easy to slip into the habit of using them singly - just to save the bother of deciding what's really going on in the dialogue. Then it doesn't read well - because it's ambiguous.

Hope that helps.

Emma

Emma is right. Ellipses trail off… a single dash is a sudden interruption. I can’t see the point of a double dash at all.

I often use pairs of dashes in dialogue – like here for instance – where the speaker interrupts what they were saying and then returns to it.

Dee

Emma and Dee

Thank you ladies, clear, concise, and unambiguous.

Best

John

I think I was the one who suggested the double-dash.

I believe it came from reading books where a hyphen was used. Now, I tend to do most of my writing in Notepad, which I then copy into word or similar. In notepad, there's no way to easily show a hyphen, so I ended up with double-dashes.

It's a good question I'd like to add; should it be a dash or a hyphen?

I always thought of a dash (singular) and an indicator or connector.

"He thought to himself - I don't need double-dashes"

Whereas I saw hyphens as interrupters

"She chided him at his lack of grammar -- no, wait, punctuation"

Note that once more I had to use a double-dash in place of a hyphen.

Now this is all from reading fiction, my knowledge of the technicality of punctuation and grammar is somewhat less than exemplary.

Would anyone have a more accurate idea of the different correct usages of hyphens and dashes? (Besides the obvious hyphenation of multi-line work in type-setting)

The dash and hyphen differ in their width. The original reference to the dash was to call it an 'em-dash' ...twice the length of a hyphen and conforming to the width of the letter 'm' of that font.

Few double hyphens are used in this Country whereas in American English the double-hyphen is more widely used to take the place of the longer dash.

However the reason appears to be one of 'ease of reading' (and particularly if the writer wishes to create a little more 'strength' with that pause). Some may argue with this.

I think there is little use for the double-hyphen for I feel it interrupts the natural flow of reading (rather like the use of three exclamation marks!!!)

Emma and Dee are spot on with their comments.

Len

Len's quite right. I was interested when I first started using a word processor, many years ago, that if you typed two hyphens it automatically turned them into an en-dash; a habit left over from typewriter days.

Mine now will turn a hyphen into an en-dash in the appropriate place, but the em-dash that a copy-editor will mark up for the long one at the end of a broken-off sentence takes a little more organising.

Emma

For what it's worth, if you are using Microsoft Word, using the key combination

Control + Alt + Minus-sign

, it will give you a long dash which looks better than two hyphens. You can't do this in ww editing itself, but if you copy-and-paste from Word into ww, it will give you an em-dash rather than a hyphen.

Chris

Or you can use ASCII codes, which are the same across most programs. en-dash is 2013 and em-dash is 2014. In MS Word you press Alt+ the number, (on the keypad, not the numbers across the top of the letters).

Emma

I read somewhere that when you use a dash in your manuscript, a double-hyphen is preferred over the 'real' dash because the 'real' dash can easily be mistaken for a single hyphen. Then again, I've also read that underlined text is preferred over italics because it's clearer, and then I read that italics are preferred over underlined text because the latter is irritating, so I don't know what to believe anymore!

I'm addicted to the dash, myself, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. I think it comes from reading too much 18th-century fiction. Back then, writers used the dash to indicate just about everything.

Which makes me wonder -- if your style is heavily influenced by something other than contemporary usage guides, is that a good thing or bad? Let's say that a writer writing in English reads a lot of French fiction and therefore uses lots of ellipses in all sorts of places, or that a writer tends to use a lot of old-fashioned constructions. Some people will complain that it's 'bad English'; but is the complain valid?

<Added>

Complaint! (I'm sure everybody knew what I meant, anyway, but still...)

For my money, all those judgments depend on whether the 'bad' things are there for a reason, and a good reason at that, and don't militate against other things: I tried a Morse novel once, because I love detective fiction, but couldn't bear a character who was supposed to be super-fussy about English, but used it so often incorrectly or sloppily himself. Similarly, 'old-fashioned' language can't be 'bad' in itself, but if it's so laboured or incomprehensible that the reader gives up, then it's shooting itself in the foot. If a writer is influenced by French literature, fine, could be very effective, but they'd better be aware that it may read vaguely or very 'foreign' or 'translated' (even if it isn't) to many English readers.

One of the advantages of writing in a character's voice (even if 3rd person) is that so many of those decisions are solved for you.

Emma

One of the advantages of writing in a character's voice (even if 3rd person) is that so many of those decisions are solved for you.

That's true, Emma. And it's probably a useful exercise to all writers (even those whose style suffers from no such anomalies) because it makes you aware just how specific your own voice is. The novel I'm working on right now has several different voices and its main narrator's style is like a caricature of my own -- very pompous, with all my idiosyncracies magnified. Even if nothing ever comes of this novel, writing it has been a very illuminating experience!

Length and structure of sentences is one of the best ways of distinguishing different narrator-characters, I find. I found myself protesting mentally to my very expert copy-editor, 'But but but Anna doesn't do commas! You must have realised that by now. Whereas Stephen, like the well-educated Romantic he is, loves a subordinate clause.'

I've almost got to the point of feeling uncomfortable with any narrative - my own most of all, but others' too - where I don't know where the narrator's coming from, particularly if the narrator offers comments: 'he said, cynically'. 'Who says?' I think. 'Do you (whoever you are) know X means it cynically, or just that X's tone is cynical, or that X means it straight, and you're telling me it's cynical?'

Emma

<Added>

But then, chronic nerdy-ness is an occupational hazard of the writer, I think.

Yeah, I have a double dose! I am not only a fiction writer, I am also a Technical Author. I could pedant for England.

Drives my wife crazy, and she's a magazine editor!

My double dose is being a writer, and writing historical fiction too. I remember an intricate conversation with one of my fellows about what class at what date ate dinner at what time. Suddenly I looked round and saw the expressions of mingled boredom and disbelief decorating the faces of the poets! And don't get me started on the development of children's underclothes, or how long it took to get from London to Carlisle in 1461. (horse? water? foot?).

Emma

<Added>

It has its more amusing moments, though, as when I had to find out whether it was possible to give someone a blow job in a Hansom cab. (But does Hansom have a capital H?)