the present feeling of happiness or misery, and we have a hope a divine illusion it may be, for it has never among men been verified by experience that in some way and at some time happiness and pleasure shall be completely reconciled by Nature, who, by mysterious deviations beyond our mortal ken, is herself also a servant of the law of justice.-Ib., p. 115f.

In each of these there is a comma or pair of commas within the group enclosed by the dashes. In the following sentence, from page 5 of the same book, the dashes enclose a parenthetical appositive group:

Plato wrestled with it when he undertook to outline the ideal republic, and many of his pages on the range of government through its five forms-aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny-sound as if he had been reading yesterday's newspapers of London and New York.

This is one of the most common uses of the dash.

The afterthought dash is employed to set off appositives, adjective or adverb groups, or other matter, the dash and the position at the end of the sentence giving such afterthoughts a considerable degree of emphasis.

The opposition to the theater by the city was doubtless in part due to moral and religious grounds, but perhaps in larger part to direct social causes, to the dangers that the theaters offered for rioting, fire, and the spread of the plague.-A. H. Thorndike, Shakespeare's Theater, p. 35.

England and the allies had laid the Corsican ghost, restored monarchy in France, rekindled the aura that invests a king. History was free once more to pursue the even tenor of her way. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these would be recorded, in a footnote, as an aberration of the human brain.-A. E. Hancock, John Keats, p. 2.

In each of these examples the dash (with comma in each case, as it happens) is an appositive point, marking in the

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231

second example a shift of structure with release of suspension. In the following passage the dash sets off an emphatic modifier:

A Dutch artist is said to have taken a cow grazing in a field as the "fixed point" in his landscape-with consequences to his perspective which may be imagined. The writer on the "laws" of punctuation is in much the same predicament.-Wendell Phillips Garrison, "A Dissolving View of Punctuation," Atlantic Monthly, August, 1906.

6. The dash has semi-mechanical uses as a repetition sign or ditto mark in catalogue work, bibliographies and the like, and between an extract and the name of the author or journal to which credit is given.

7. The en dash in typographical work-the hyphen character being the nearest equivalent in typewritingis used between dates or numbers, between names which are not single orthographic units, sometimes in compound words set in capitals.

Pages 35-55.

April 20-26, 1918.

The New York-Philadelphia trains. [But Boston-Hartford express with hyphen.]

THE DASH WITH OTHER POINTS

Certain publishers of high standing use the combination of colon with dash before quotations separately paragraphed, and many publications make considerable use of comma with dash. On the other hand there is a strong and apparently growing weight of opinion against most combinations with the dash in text matter. The Style Book of Typographical Practice compiled by Mr. Douglas C.

McMurtrie and used by the Columbia University Printing Office says categorically: “The dash . . . cannot properly be combined with other punctuation." Mr. F. Horace Teall, in his Punctuation, with Chapters on Hyphenization, is equally emphatic: "As a matter of fact, the dash [with colon] adds nothing but an unsightly mark on the page." "No writer . . . has stated a sufficient reason for using a dash and any other point together." The Manual of Style of the University of Chicago Press (fifth edition, page 68) says, "A dash should ordinarily not be used with any other point, except a period." These opinions are recent, except Mr. Teall's, and of high authority. That of Mr. Teall, cited from a work with copyright date 1897, is evidence that the objection to the reinforced or reinforcing dash is no novelty.

The combination of period and dash is used for the most part (1) between a side-head and the first word following, (2) between an extract and the name of the work or author, (3) to mark a break within a paragraph or to indicate a paragraph where space must be saved. After side-heads the period is often used without the dash. The mid-paragraph dash, once common, is infrequent now in ordinary matter.

The dash is rarely used before or after a terminal question or exclamation mark. But either may occur at the end of a parenthetical group between dashes.

Yet in the history of France alluded to above, the description of the feudal system scarcely extends beyond dungeons,-"Oh how damp, dark, and cold!"-knee clamps and thumbscrews.James Harvey Robinson, The New History, p. 11.

The dash sometimes occurs after but seldom before the second of a pair of curves, not often after a semicolon, more frequently after colon or comma.

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233

The combination colon with dash is sometimes used before an appositive or quotation which follows in the same paragraph, but much oftener before a paragraph break, as after the Dear Sir of a letter or after words introducing an extract. The utility of the dash is indiscernible.

For the union of comma with dash there have been rules admirable for their ingenuity if for nothing else. The fact is that the dash can do any work done by the comma and dash together, except only that the combination seems more emphatic. A series parenthesis containing commas may be enclosed between dashes or between commas with dashes; an emphatic afterthought with or without commas can be suspended by either the single or the reinforced dash; compounding can be managed with the dash alone or with the dash reinforced by preceding comma. There may be arbitrary distinctions between the dash and the reinforced dash, but no such distinction is generally valid or indeed clearly understood, except for a supposed difference in strength.

Very rarely a parenthesis has a dash at the beginning and a comma with dash at the end. This arrangement is likely to seem eccentric, whatever the apparent logical justification. As the dash is not limited to parenthetical work as curves are limited, the second dash of pair may

do two kinds of work at the same time.

The dash may either precede or follow an end quote, according to circumstances.

"Welcome to Mexico!" he said.

"Could you tell me- "I continued.

"Welcome to our sunny Mexico!" he repeated-"our beautiful, glorious Mexico. Her heart throbs at the sight of you."-Stephen Leacock, Further Foolishness, p. 67f.

VIII. CURVES

The name parenthesis happens to be the most convenient term for an intermediate expression which might be omitted without dislocation of structure. For this reason and because the most frequent parenthetical marks are commas, the term parentheses for a particular pair of marks may be misleading. The name curves, already current, has therefore been used in this book.

In the plainest kinds of prose, curves are used mainly for two purposes: (1) to enclose numbers or letters, as in this sentence, enumerating the members of a series, (2) to enclose incidental explanatory matter, page references, or descriptive matter which other points would emphasize too much or not distinguish clearly from matter in the immediate context. But in the more elaborate or literary types of prose, curves have a less restricted use. They may enclose sentences, even passages of some length; within the sentence they may set off parentheses of considerable length and complexity.

Excessive use of curves may give an air of self-consciousness, of formality, of quaintness where quaintness is vanity. Curves are infrequent in good untechnical writing.

When curves enclose explanation made necessary by poor writing, they give the impression of laziness.

John said that he (James) expected to come in the early after

noon.

Crves are employed, often as alternative to commas or dashes, for the following uses:

1. To enclose matter which is to be taken as actually or in form parenthetical.

The following sentences illustrate the lighter uses of curves for incidental parentheses: