Apostrophes
Take the word boy. Add an 's'. You have the plural 'boys', meaning more than one boy. Put an apostrophe between the y and the s, and you form the possessive. 'The boy's ball' meaning the ball that belongs to the boy (singular). Sounds the same as 'boys' but an entirely different meaning. Put an apostrophe at the end of boys: "boys'" and you have one ball that belongs to many boys.
Hyphens
Ever get that red line on a word that you know is right like "toolbox" or "holdout" or "neoevangelical"? Try a hyphen: tool-box, hold-out, neo-evangelical and watch the red line magically disappear.
Dashes
The great writer C. S. Lewis found the need for a form of stop somewhere between a period and a comma. He took to using a dash. Word processing programs know when you're trying to use one, just hit two hyphens in a row. For example, "Joe--the fine postman of our street--always came up to our door with a smile." Most programs will automatically turn this double hyphen into a long dash. Also, if you hit "space, hyphen, space" you'll usually get a version of the long dash.
No comments:
Post a Comment