Quote:
Originally Posted by elibrarian
We do, like:
– He said it was going to rain, didn't he?
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In Spanish, they're used as well. (I first learned about Quotation Dashes from my great friend, Jellby.)
For some more info, also check out the fantastic article:
(The rest of the article is amazing—especially
the Summary Table)—... the Quotation Dash section, not so much, but it's an okay stepping stone. Maybe other-lanugage Wikipedias would have a better article on the topic.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by elibrarian
but the people who make the rules are probably not the same as those who make epubs … and no one in the real world would notice if you used emdash instead.
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Yes, the EM DASH is what I recommended in that thread once I tested the HORIZONTAL BAR. (Yes, it's the correct Unicode character for a "Quotation Dash", and
should be used where possible...)
Hopefully, in the future, font support in ebooks will get better.
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Side Note: Speaking of weird Unicode characters... I recently learned I've been doing this wrong:
That little "apostrophe"-looking symbol? It's called an:
which is a Hawaiian letter.
In Unicode, it's actually a:
- ʻ = U+02BB = MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA
which IS NOT a LEFT/RIGHT SINGLE QUOTE, it's actually a flipped+reversed comma... (See Wikipedia page for example of it used in different languages.)
For a little more info on how I stumbled upon this, see
my post a few weeks ago.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doitsu
AFAIK, the first style guide that recommended replacing to-day with today was H.W. Fowler's hugely popular book The King's English, [...]
[...]
I.e., even purists can't complain if you replace to-day with today in books published after 1906.  |
I'm suspecting it's because of different pronunciation back then.
Like TO-day instead of to-DAY.
You may be very interested in these 2 "Lexicon Valley" podcast episodes:
Also, he covered it a little in:
He describes the evolution of:
- new/two words
- -> hyphenated
- -> no hyphen
and how pronunciation changes over time.
A "backshift" tends to occur. When words first come into being, the emphasis is usually on the SECOND part, but as it becomes more well-known, the emphasis shifts earlier.
Some examples he described in the podcasts:
- deejay
- Batman
- suspect
- supermarket
- blackboard
- hot dog
So, when they were new:
- dee-JAY
- bat-MAN
- suh-SPECT
- super-MARKET
- black-BOARD
- hot DOG
but as they became more well-known, the emphasis shifted earlier:
- DEE-jay
- BAT-man
- SUH-spect
- SUPER-market
- BLACK-board
- HOT dog
(Similar pattern happens with hyphens dropping out of words as they become more popular—e-mail -> email.)
I'm suspecting to-morrow/to-day/to-night probably go way, way back to Middle English.
Now, why those three didn't drop the hyphen until the 1900s->1940s? Unsure. Could've been Fowler that pushed it over the edge!
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Side Note: While researching this, I just came across all these funky words from Middle English:
- to-beat
- to-bread
- to-break
- to-brest
- to-burst
- to-draw
- to-drive
- to-fore
- to-forehand
- to-foren
- to-frush
- to-grind
- to-heap
- to-hew
- to-morn
- to-name
There were probably a ton of "to-" words, which all disappeared, even way before the 1800s.
Those 3 (morning/day/night) are probably the few that survived into Modern English.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
<em> & <strong> are nothing more then screwed-up versions of <i> & <b> with no difference at all.
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Enough of this tomfoolery. You're embarrassing yourself now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
After 14 years there is little evidence in the real world of such a semantic choice being made. It's a dead idea and doesn't help accessibility.
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Same with this.
The previous threads/debates discussed all this, in extreme detail.
Case after case has been brought up, explaining why emphasis and italics are different.
Italics DOES NOT EXIST in many languages.
Emphasis IS DONE COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY in many other languages.
To continue insisting the opposite is just... I don't know what to say.
Just reread the previous topics where Jellby, Turtle91, me, and others gave many details and explained, case-after-case, with example-after-example, of all sorts of reasoning why <em> + <i> are both used AND valid AND tools that make the distinction.
* * *
Anyway, I'm done going on about it. There's not much more to say since the last "emphasis debate".
Nothing has really changed besides me learning more about Braille + tools blind readers actually use. (Which are linked above.)