Saturday, February 7, 2015

The lowly hyphen: a character inferior to an "en", but in the hands of Margaret Menge? A powerful tool

Stay with me here.

In publishing there are three "dashes":
An "em": —
An "en": –
And the lowly "hyphen": -

Margaret Menge knows the difference. She knows where 'dashes' are used and when, as importantly, when they are not to be used.

Here is an excerpt from Margaret Menge's newspaper on 2/6/15, her 4th issue, on page 4:
Register MondayThursday, 9:00 a.m.4:30 p.m. at the Osborne Community Center at 1699 Wingfield Street.
Registration ends Saturday, March 7. For more information, call Coach Osborne at 540-5133
 [...]
Note how Margaret Menge uses the em (—) appropriately, the en (–) in a range, and a hyphen (-) in a phone number.

Here is a line from Ms. Menge's newspaper on page 3 about the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival and the need for volunteers to help with the Trolley "Welcome Wagons" shuttling visitors to the festival:
Email Greg Rice at greg-rice33460@gmail.com to volunteer.
Only an intern or an amateur editor, surely not a 'journalist' with skill levels equal to Margaret Menge, would line-break an email address. A professional editor would edit to avoid. Well, she did and we think it was purposeful. This is what you see when you email greg-rice33460@gmail.com:
Here is Greg Rice's actual email address: gregrice33460@gmail.com

Question; the casual reader of Margaret Menge's newspaper would be expected to know the hyphen (-) in Mr. Greg Rice's email address is unnecessary? Of course not. 

Nice try, Margaret. Oh, and by the way, all the volunteers for the "Welcome Wagons" are already scheduled. At least that is my understanding, however, email Greg Rice to be sure.