Fortunate man!—who would not envy you! Love!—who would, who could exist without it—save me!—Corelli.
What wonder that the most docile of Russians should be crying out ‘how long’!—Times.
We have started with three indisputable instances of the exclamation mark used for the question mark. It is worth notice that the correct stopping for the end of the second quotation (though such accuracy is seldom attempted) would be:—long?’? To have fused two questions into an exclamation is an achievement. But these are mere indefensible blunders, not needing to be thought twice about, such as author and compositor incline to put off each on the other’s shoulders.
The case is not always so clear. In the six sentences lettered for reference, a-d have the wrong stop; in e the stop implied by he exclaims is also wrong; in f, though the stop is right assuming that the form of the sentence is what was really meant, we venture to question this point, as we do also in some of the earlier sentences. Any one who agrees with the details of this summary can save himself the trouble of reading the subsequent discussion.
a. In that interval what had I not lost!—Lamb.
b. And what will not the discontinuance cost me!—Richardson.
c. A streak of blue below the hanging alders is certainly a characteristic introduction to the kingfisher. How many people first see him so?—Times.
d. Does the reading of history make us fatalists? What courage does not the opposite opinion show!—Emerson.
e. What economy of life and money, he exclaims, would not have been spared the empire of the Tsars had it not rendered war certain by devoting itself so largely to the works of peace.—Times.
f. How many, who think no otherwise than the young painter, have we not heard disbursing secondhand hyperboles?—Stevenson.
It will be noticed that in all these sentences except c there is a negative, which puts them, except f, wrong; while in c it is the absence of the negative that makes the question wrong. It will be simplest to start with c. The writer clearly means to let us know that many people see the kingfisher first as a blue streak. He might give this simply so, as a statement. He might (artificially) give it as an exclamation—How many first see him so! Or he might (very artificially) give it as a question—How many do not first see him so?—a ‘rhetorical question’ in which How many interrogative is understood to be equivalent to Few positive. He has rejected the simple statement; vaulting ambition has o’erleapt, and he has ended in a confusion between the two artificial ways of saying the thing, taking the words of the possible exclamation and the stop of the possible question. In a, b, d, and implicitly in e, we have the converse arrangement, or derangement. But as a little more clear thinking is required for them, we point out that the origin of the confusion (though the careless printing of fifty or a hundred years ago no doubt helped to establish it) lies in the identity between the words used for questions and for exclamations. It will be enough to suggest the process that accounts for a; the ambiguity is easily got rid of by inserting a noun with what.
Question: What amount had I lost?
Exclamation: What an amount I had lost!
That is the first stage; the resemblance is next increased by inverting subject and verb in the exclamation, which is both natural enough in that kind of sentence, and particularly easy after In that interval. So we get
Question: In that interval, what (amount) had I lost?
Exclamation: In that interval, what (an amount) had I lost!
The words, when the bracketed part of each sentence is left out, are now the same; but the question is of course incapable of giving the required meaning. The writer, seeing this, but deceived by the order of words into thinking the exclamation a question, tries to mend it by inserting not; what ... not, in rhetorical questions, being equivalent to everything. At this stage some writers stick, as Stevenson in f. Others try to make a right out of two wrongs by restoring to the quondam exclamation, which has been wrongly converted with the help of not into a question, the exclamation mark to which it has after conversion no right. Such is the genesis of a, b, d. The proper method, when the simple statement is rejected, as it often reasonably may be, is to use the exclamation, not the Stevensonian question[13], to give the exclamation its right mark, and not to insert the illogical negative.
12. Internal question and exclamation marks.
By this name we do not mean that insertion of a bracketed stop of which we shall nevertheless give one example. That is indeed a confession of weakness and infallible sign of the prentice hand, and further examples will be found in Airs and Graces, miscellaneous; but it is outside grammar, with which these sections are concerned.
Under these circumstances, it would be interesting to ascertain the exact position of landlords whose tenants decline to pay rent, and whose only asset (!) from their property is the income-tax now claimed.—Times.
What is meant is the ugly stop in the middle of a sentence, unbracketed and undefended by quotation marks, of which examples follow. To novelists, as in the first example, it may be necessary for the purpose of avoiding the nuisance of perpetual quotation marks. But elsewhere it should be got rid of by use of the indirect question or otherwise. Excessive indulgence in direct questions or exclamations where there is no need for them whatever is one of the sensational tendencies of modern newspapers.
Why be scheming? Victor asked.—Meredith.
What will Japan do? is thought the most pressing question of all.—Times. (What Japan will do is thought, &c.)
What next? is the next question which the American Press discusses.—Times. (‘What next?’ is, &c. Or, What will come next is, &c.)
Amusing efforts are shown below at escaping the ugliness of the internal question mark. Observe that the third quotation has a worse blunder, since we have here two independent sentences.
Can it be that the Government will still persist in continuing the now hopeless struggle is the question on every lip?—Times.
Men are disenchanted. They have got what they wanted in the days of their youth, yet what of it, they ask?—Morley.
Yet we remember seeing l’Abbé Constantin some sixteen years ago or more at the Royalty, with that fine old actor Lafontaine in the principal part, and seeing it with lively interest. Was it distinctly ‘dates’, for nothing wears so badly as the namby-pamby?—Times.
13. The unaccountable comma.
We shall now conclude these grammatical sections with a single example of those commas about which it is only possible to say that they are repugnant to grammar. It is as difficult to decide what principle they offend against as what impulse can possibly have dictated them. They are commonest in the least educated writers of all; and, next to these, in the men of science whose overpowering conscientiousness has made the mechanical putting in of commas so habitual that it perhaps becomes with them a sort of reflex action, and does itself at wrong moments without their volition.
The Rector, lineal representative of the ancient monarchs of the University, though now, little more than a ‘king of shreds and patches.’—Huxley.
The Colon
It was said in the general remarks at the beginning of this chapter that the systematic use of the colon as one of the series (,), (;), (:), (.), had died out with the decay of formal periods. Many people continue to use it, but few, if we can trust our observation, with any nice regard to its value. Some think it a prettier or more impressive stop than the semicolon, and use it instead of that; some like variety, and use the two indifferently, or resort to one when they are tired of the other. As the abandonment of periodic arrangement really makes the colon useless, it would be well (though of course any one who still writes in formal periods should retain his rights over it) if ordinary writers would give it up altogether except in the special uses, independent of its quantitative value, to which it is being more and more applied by common consent. These are (1) between two sentences that are in clear antithesis, but not connected by an adversative conjunction; (2) introducing a short quotation; (3) introducing a list; (4) introducing a sentence that comes as fulfilment of a promise expressed or implied in the previous sentence; (5) introducing an explanation or proof that is not connected with the previous sentence by for or the like. Examples are:
(1) Man proposes: God disposes.
(2) Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself.—B.
(3) Chief rivers: Thames, Severn, Humber....
(4) Some things we can, and others we cannot do: we can walk, but we cannot fly.—Bigelow.
(5) Rebuke thy son in private: public rebuke hardens the heart.—B.
In the following clear case of antithesis a colon would have been more according to modern usage than the semicolon.
As apart from our requirements Mr. Arnold-Forster’s schemes have many merits; in relation to them they have very few.—Times.
It now only remains, before leaving actual stops for the dash, hyphen, quotation mark, and bracket, to comment on a few stray cases of ambiguity, false scent, and ill-judged stopping. We have not hunted up, and shall not manufacture, any of the patent absurdities that are amusing but unprofitable. The sort of ambiguity that most needs guarding against is that which allows a sleepy reader to take the words wrong when the omission or insertion of a stop would have saved him.
The chief agitators of the League, who have—not unnaturally considering the favours showered upon them in the past—a high sense of their own importance....—Times.
With no comma after unnaturally the first thought is that the agitators not unnaturally consider; second thoughts put it right; but second thoughts should never be expected from a reader.
Simultaneously extensive reclamation of land and harbour improvements are in progress at Chemulpo and Fusan.—Times.
With no comma after the first word, the sleepy reader is set wondering what simultaneously extensive means, and whether it is journalese for equally extensive.
But Anne and I did, for we had played there all our lives—at least, all the years we had spent together and the rest do not count in the story. When Anne and I came together we began to live.—Crockett.
A comma after together would save us from adding the two sets of years to each other. In the next piece, on the other hand, the uncomfortable comma after gold is apparently meant to warn us quite unnecessarily that here and there belongs to the verb.
Flecks of straw-coloured gold, here and there lay upon it, where the sunshine touched the bent of last year.—Crockett.
After that, having once fallen off from their course, they at length succeeded in crossing the Aegean, and beating up in the teeth of the Etesian winds, only yesterday, seventy days out from Egypt, put in at the Piraeus.—S. T. Irwin.
The omission of the comma between and and beating would ordinarily be quite legitimate. Here, it puts us off on a false scent, because it allows beating to seem parallel with crossing and object to succeeded in; we have to go back again when we get to the end, and work it out.
The French demurring to the conditions which the English commander offered, again commenced the action.—B.
The want of a comma between French and demurring makes us assume an absolute construction and expect another subject, of which we are disappointed.
The next two pairs of examples illustrate the effect of mere accidental position on stopping. This is one of the numberless small disturbing elements that make cast-iron rules impossible in punctuation.
I must leave you to discover what the answer is.
What the answer is, I must leave you to discover.
That is, a substantival clause out of its place is generally allowed the comma that all but the straitest sect of punctuators would refuse it in its place.
In the present dispute, therefore, the local politicians have had to choose between defence of the principle of authority and espousing the cause of the local police.—Times.
Of its forty-four commissioners however few actually took any part in its proceedings; and the powers of the Commission....—J. R. Green.
The half adverbs half conjunctions of which therefore and however are instances occupy usually the second place in the sentence. When there, it is of little importance whether they are stopped or not, though we have indicated our preference for no stops. But when it happens that they come later (or earlier), the commas are generally wanted. Therefore in the first of these sentences would be as uncomfortable if stripped as however actually is in the second.
Dashes
Moved beyond his wont by our English ill-treatment of the dash, Beadnell permits himself a wail as just as it is pathetic.
‘The dash is frequently employed in a very capricious and arbitrary manner, as a substitute for all sorts of points, by writers whose thoughts, although, it may be, sometimes striking and profound, are thrown together without order or dependence; also by some others, who think that they thereby give prominence and emphasis to expressions which in themselves are very commonplace, and would, without this fictitious assistance, escape the observation of the reader, or be deemed by him hardly worthy of notice.’
It is all only too true; these are the realms of Chaos, and the lord of them is Sterne, from whom modern writers of the purely literary kind have so many of their characteristics. Wishing for an example, we merely opened the first volume of Tristram Shandy at a venture, and ‘thus the Anarch old With faltering speech and visage incomposed Answered’:
—Observe, I determine nothing upon this.—My way is ever to point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the events I tell;—not with a pedantic fescue,—or in the decisive manner of Tacitus, who outwits himself and his reader;—but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to the assistance merely of the inquisitive;—to them I write,—and by them I shall be read,—if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold out so long,—to the very end of the world.—Sterne.
The modern newspaper writer who overdoes the use of dashes is seldom as incorrect as Sterne, but is perhaps more irritating:
There are also a great number of people—many of them not in the least tainted by militarism—who go further and who feel that a man in order to be a complete man—that is, one capable of protecting his life, his country, and his civil and political rights—should acquire as a boy and youth the elements of military training,—that is, should be given a physical training of a military character, including....—Spectator.
It must be added, however, that Beadnell himself helps to make things worse, by countenancing the strange printer’s superstition that (,—) is beautiful to look upon, and (—,) ugly.
Under these circumstances we shall have to abandon our usual practice of attending only to common mistakes, and deal with the matter a little more systematically. We shall first catalogue, with examples, the chief uses of the dash; next state the debatable questions that arise; and end with the more definite misuses. It will be convenient to number all examples for reference; and, as many or most of the quotations contain some minor violation of what we consider the true principles, these will be corrected in brackets.
1. Chief common uses.
a. Adding to a phrase already used an explanation, example, or preferable substitute.
1. Nicholas Copernicus was instructed in that seminary where it is always happy when any one can be well taught,—the family circle.—B. (Omit the comma)
2. Anybody might be an accuser,—a personal enemy, an infamous person, a child, parent, brother, or sister.—Lowell. (Omit the comma)
3. That the girls were really possessed seemed to Stoughton and his colleagues the most rational theory,—a theory in harmony with the rest of their creed.—Lowell. (Omit the comma)
b. Inviting the reader to pause and collect his forces against the shock of an unexpected word that is to close the sentence. It is generally, but not always, better to abstain from this device; the unexpected, if not drawn attention to, is often more effective because less theatrical.
4. To write imaginatively a man should have—imagination.—Lowell.
c. Assuring the reader that what is coming, even if not unexpected, is witty. Writers should be exceedingly sparing of this use; good wine needs no bush.
5. Misfortune in various forms had overtaken the county families, from high farming to a taste for the junior stage, and—the proprietors lived anywhere else except on their own proper estates.—Crockett.
d. Marking arrival at the principal sentence or the predicate after a subordinate clause or a subject that is long or compound.
6. As soon as the queen shall come to London, and the houses of Parliament shall be opened, and the speech from the throne be delivered,—then will begin the great struggle of the contending factions.—B.
e. Resuming after a parenthesis or long phrase, generally with repetition of some previous words in danger of being forgotten.
7. It is now idle to attempt to hide the fact that never was the Russian lack of science, of the modern spirit, or, to speak frankly, of intelligence—never was the absence of training or of enthusiasm which retards the efforts of the whole Empire displayed in a more melancholy fashion than in the Sea of Japan.—Times. (Add a comma after intelligence)
f. Giving the air of an afterthought to a final comment that would spoil the balance of the sentence if preceded only by an ordinary stop. Justifiable when really wanted, that is, when it is important to keep the comment till the end; otherwise it is slightly insulting to the reader, implying that he was not worth working out the sentence for before it was put down.
8. As they parted, she insisted on his giving the most solemn promises that he would not expose himself to danger—which was quite unnecessary.
g. Marking a change of speakers when quotation marks and ‘he said’, &c., are not used; or, in a single speech, a change of subject or person addressed.
9. Who created you?—God.—B.
h. With colon or other stop before a quotation.
11. Hear Milton:—How charming is divine Philosophy!
12. What says Bacon?—Revenge is a kind of wild justice.
i. Introducing a list.
13. The four greatest names in English literature are almost the first we come to,—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.—B. (Omit the comma before the dash)
k. Confessing an anacoluthon, or substitution of a new construction for the one started with.
14. Then the eye of a child,—who can look unmoved into that well undefiled, in which heaven itself seems to be reflected?—Bigelow. (Omit the comma)
l. Breaking off a sentence altogether.
15. Oh, how I wish—! But what is the use of wishing?
m. Doubled to serve the purpose of brackets. It gives a medium between the light comma parenthesis and the heavy bracket parenthesis. It also has the advantage over brackets that when the parenthesis ends only with the sentence the second dash need not be given; this advantage, however, may involve ambiguity, as will be shown.
16. In every well regulated community—such as that of England,—the laws own no superior.—B. (The comma should either be omitted or placed after instead of before the second dash).
These are a dozen distinct uses of more or less value or importance, to which others might no doubt be added; but they will suffice both to show that the dash is a hard-worked symbol, and to base our remarks upon.
2. Debatable questions.
There are several questions that must be answered before we can use the dash with confidence. First, is the dash to supersede stops at the place where it is inserted, or to be added to them? Secondly, what is its relation to the stops in the part of the sentence (or group of sentences) that follows it? Does its authority, that is, extend to the end of the sentence or group, or where does it cease? Thirdly, assuming that it is or can be combined with stops, what is the right order as between the two?
Beadnell’s answer to the first question is: The dash does not dispense with the use of the ordinary points at the same time, when the grammatical construction of the sentence requires them. But inasmuch as a dash implies some sort of break, irregular pause, or change of intention, it seems quite needless to insert the stop that would have been used if it had not been decided that a stop was inadequate. The dash is a confession that the stop will not do; then let the stop go. The reader, who is the person to be considered, generally neither knows nor cares to know how the sentence might, with inferior effect, have been written; he only feels that the stop is otiose, and that his author had better have been off with the old love before he was on with the new. There are exceptions to this: obviously in examples 9, 10, 11, 12, and 15, where the dash is at the end or beginning of a sentence; and perhaps also in sentences of which the reader can clearly foresee the grammatical development. In example 7, for instance, it is clear that a participle (displayed or another) is due after never was &c.; a comma after intelligence is therefore definitely expected. So in example 6 we are expecting either another continuation of as soon as, or the principal sentence, before either of which a comma is looked for. In examples 2 and 3, on the other hand, the sentence may for all we know be complete at the place where the dash stands, so that no expectation is disappointed by omitting the comma. The rule, then, should be that a dash is a substitute for any internal stop, and not an addition to it, except when, from the reader’s point of view, a particular stop seemed inevitable.
It must be admitted that that conclusion is not very certain, and also that the matter is of no great importance, provided that the stops, if inserted, are the right ones. More certainty is possible about the combination of stops with the double dash, which we have not yet considered. The probable origin of the double dash will be touched upon when we come to the second question; but whatever its origin, it is now simply equivalent to a pair of brackets, except that it is slightly less conspicuous, and sometimes preferred on that account. Consequently, the same rule about stops will apply to both, and as there is no occasion to treat of brackets separately, it may here be stated for both. The use of a parenthesis being to insert, without damage to the rest of the sentence, something that is of theoretically minor importance, it is necessary that we should be able simply to remove the two dashes or brackets with everything enclosed by them, and after their removal find the sentence complete and rightly punctuated. Further, there is no reason for using inside the parenthesis any stop that has not an internal value; that is, no stop can possibly be needed just before the second dash except an exclamation or question mark, and none at all just after the first; but stops may be necessary to divide up the parenthesis itself if it is compound. Three examples follow, with the proper corrections in brackets:
17. Garinet cites the case of a girl near Amiens possessed by three demons,—Mimi, Zozo, and Crapoulet,—in 1816.—Lowell. (Omit both commas; the first is indeed just possible, though not required, in the principal sentence; the last is absolutely meaningless in the parenthesis)
18. Its visions and its delights are too penetrating,—too living,—for any white-washed object or shallow fountain long to endure or to supply.—Ruskin. (Omit both commas; this time the first is as impossible in the principal sentence as the second is meaningless in the parenthesis)
19. The second carries us on from 1625 to 1714—less than a century—yet the walls of the big hall in the Examination Schools are not only well covered....—Times. (Insert a comma, as necessary to the principal sentence, outside the dashes; whether before the first or after the last will be explained in our answer to the third question)
The second question is, how far the authority of the dash extends. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why we should not on the one hand be relieved of it by the next stop, or on the other be subject to it till the paragraph ends. The three following examples, which we shall correct in brackets by anticipation, but which we shall also assume not to be mere careless blunders, seem to go on the first hypothesis.
20. The Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness—yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored.—Emerson. (Substitute a dash for the comma after himself. Here, however, Emerson expects us to terminate the authority at the right comma rather than at the first that comes, making things worse)
21. I ... there complained of the common notions of the special virtues—justice, &c., as too vague to furnish exact determinations of the actions enjoined under them.—H. Sidgwick. (Substitute a dash for the comma after &c.)
22. There are vicars and vicars, and of all sorts I love an innovating vicar—a piebald progressive professional reactionary, the least.—H. G. Wells. (Substitute a dash for the comma after reactionary)
It needs no further demonstration, however, that commas are frequently used after a dash without putting an end to its influence; and if they are to be sometimes taken, nevertheless, as doing so, confusion is sure to result. Unless the author of the next example is blind to the danger that two neighbouring but independent dashes may be mistaken for a parenthetic pair, he must have assumed that the authority of a dash is terminated at any rate by a semicolon; that, if true, would obviate the danger.
23. It is a forlorn hope, however excellent the translation—and Mr. Hankin’s could not be bettered; or however careful the playing—and the playing at the Stage Society performance was meticulously careful.—Times. (Insert a dash between bettered and the semicolon, which then need not be more than a comma)
But that it is not true will probably be admitted on the strength of sentences like:
24. There may be differences of opinion on the degrees—no one takes white for black: most people sometimes take blackish for black—, but that is not fatal to my argument.
On the other hand, we doubt whether a full stop is ever allowed to stand in the middle of a dash parenthesis, as it of course may in a bracket parenthesis. The reason for the distinction is clear. When we have had a left-hand bracket we know for certain that a right-hand one is due, full stops or no full stops; but when we have had a dash, we very seldom know for certain that it is one of a pair; and the appearance of a full stop would be too severe a trial of our faith. It seems natural to suppose that the double-dash parenthesis is thus accounted for: the construction started with a single dash; but as it was often necessary to revert to the main construction, the second dash was resorted to as a declaration that the close time, or state of siege, was over. The rule we deduce is: All that follows a dash is to be taken as under its influence until either a second dash terminates it, or a full stop is reached.
Our answer to the third question has already been given by implication; but it may be better to give it again explicitly. We first refer to examples 1, 2, 3, 6, 13, 14, 24, in all of which the stop, if one is to be used, though our view is that in most of these sentences it should not, is in the right place; and to example 16, in which it is in the wrong place. We next add two new examples of wrong order, with corrections as usual; the rules for stops with brackets are the same as with double dashes.
25. Throughout the parts which they are intended to make most personally their own, (the Psalms,) it is always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy.—Ruskin. (Remove both commas, and use according to taste either none at all, or one after the second bracket)
26. What is the difference, whether land and sea interact, and worlds revolve and intermingle without number or end,—deep yawning under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout absolute space,—or, whether....—Emerson. (Remove both commas, and place one after the second dash)
A protest must next be made against the compositor’s superstition embodied in Beadnell’s words: As the dash in this case supplies the place of the parenthesis, strictly speaking, the grammatical point should follow the last dash; but as this would have an unsightly appearance, it is always placed before it. This unsightliness is either imaginary or at most purely conventional, and should be entirely disregarded. The rules will be (1) For the single dash: Since the dash is on any view either a correction of or an addition to the stop that would have been used if dashes had not existed, the dash will always stand after the stop. (2) For the double dash or brackets: There will be one stop or none according to the requirements of the principal sentence only; there will never be two stops (apart, of course, from internal ones); if there is one, it will stand before the first or after the last dash or bracket according as the parenthesis belongs to the following or the preceding part of the principal sentence. It may be added that it is extremely rare for the parenthesis to belong to the last part, and therefore for the stop to be rightly placed before it. In the following example constructed for the occasion it does so belong; but for practical purposes the rule might be that if a stop is required it stands after the second dash or bracket.
27. When I last saw him, (a singular fact) his nose was pea-green.
3. Common misuses.
a. If two single independent dashes are placed near each other, still more if they are in the same sentence, the reader naturally takes them for a pair constituting a parenthesis, and has to reconsider the sentence when he finds that his first reading gives nonsense. We refer back to example 23. But this indiscretion is so common that it is well to add some more. The sentences should be read over without the two dashes and what they enclose.
Then there is also Miss Euphemia, long deposed from her office of governess, but pensioned and so driven to good works and the manufacture of the most wonderful crazy quilts—for which, to her credit be it said, she shows a remarkable aptitude—as I should have supposed.—Crockett.
The English came mainly from the Germans, whom Rome found hard to conquer in 210 years—say, impossible to conquer—when one remembers the long sequel.—Emerson.
As for Anne—well, Anne was Anne—never more calm than when others were tempestuous.—Crockett.
b. The first dash is inserted and the second forgotten. It will suffice to refer back to examples 20, 21, 22.
c. Brackets and dashes are combined. It is a pity from the collector’s point of view that Carlyle, being in the mood, did not realize the full possibilities, and add a pair of commas, closing up the parenthesis in robur et aes triplex.
How much would I give to have my mother—(though both my wife and I have of late times lived wholly for her, and had much to endure on her account)—how much would I give to have her back to me.—Carlyle.
d. Like the comma, the dash is sometimes misplaced by a word or two. In the first example, the first dash should be one place later; and in the second, unless we misread the sentence and this is another case of two single dashes, the second dash should be two places earlier, and itself be replaced by a comma.
Here she is perhaps at her best—and in the best sense—her most feminine, as a woman sympathizing with the sorrows peculiar to women.—Times.
The girl he had dreamed about—the girl with the smile was there—near him, in his hut.—Crockett.
e. Dashes are sometimes used when an ordinary stop would serve quite well. In the Lowell sentences, the reason why a comma is not used is that the members are themselves broken up by commas, and therefore demand a heavier stop to divide them from each other; this, as explained in the early part of the chapter, is the place for a semicolon. In the Corelli sentence, it is a question between comma and semicolon, either of which would do quite well.
Shakespeare found a language already to a certain extent established, but not yet fetlocked by dictionary and grammar mongers,—a versification harmonized, but which had not yet....—Lowell.
While I believe that our language had two periods of culmination in poetic beauty,—one of nature, simplicity, and truth, in the ballads, which deal only with narrative and feeling,—another of Art....—Lowell.
We were shown in,—and Mavis, who had expected our visit did not keep us waiting long.—Corelli.
Hyphens
We return here to our usual practice of disregarding everything not necessary for dealing with common mistakes. But some general principles, most of which will probably find acceptance, will be useful to start from.
1. Hyphens are regrettable necessities, and to be done without when they reasonably may.
2. There are three degrees of intimacy between words, of which the first and loosest is expressed by their mere juxtaposition as separate words, the second by their being hyphened, and the third or closest by their being written continuously as one word. Thus, hand workers, hand-workers, handworkers.
3. It is good English usage to place a noun or other non-adjectival part of speech before a noun, printing it as a separate word, and to regard it as serving the purpose of an adjective in virtue of its position; for instance, war expenditure; but there are sometimes special objections to its being done. Thus, words in -ing may be actual adjectives (participles), or nouns (gerunds), used in virtue of their position as adjectives; and a visible distinction is needed. A walking stick is a stick that walks, and the phrase might occur as a metaphorical description of a stiffly behaved person: a walking-stick or walkingstick is a stick for walking; the difference may sometimes be important, and consistency may be held to require that all compounds with gerunds should be hyphened or made into single words.
4. Not only can a single word in ordinary circumstances be thus treated as an adjective, but the same is true of a phrase; the words of the phrase, however, must then be hyphened, or ambiguity may result. Thus: Covent Garden; Covent-Garden Market; Covent-Garden-Market salesmen.
The prevailing method of giving railway and street names, besides its ungainliness, is often misleading and contrary to common sense. For one difficulty we suggest recurrence to the old-fashioned formula with commas, and and, as in The London, Chatham, and Dover. On another, it is to be observed that New York-street should mean the new part of York Street, but New-York Street the street named after New York. The set of examples includes some analogous cases, besides the railway and street names.
It is stated that the train service on the Hsin-min-tun-Kau-pan-tse-Yingkau section of the Imperial Chinese Railway will be restored within a few days.—Times.
Hsinmintun, Kaupantse, and Yingkau. These places can surely do without their internal hyphens in an English newspaper; and one almost suspects, from the absence of a hyphen between Ying and kau, that the Times’s stock must have run short.
Even third-class carriages are scarce on the Dalny-Port Arthur line.—Times.
The Dalny and Port-Arthur line. By general principle 4, though Port Arthur needs no hyphen by itself, it does as soon as it stands for an adjective with line: the Port-Arthur line. Also, by 2, the Times version implies that Dalny is more closely connected with Port than Port with Arthur. We do indeed most of us know at present that there is no Dalny Port so called, and that there is a Port Arthur. But in the next example, who would know that there was a Brest Litovski, but for the sentence that follows?
A general strike has been declared on the Warsaw-Brest Litovski railway. The telegraph stations at Praga, Warsaw, and Brest Litovski have been damaged.—Times.
The Warsaw and Brest-Litovski railway. By 4, the hyphen between Brest and Litovski is necessary. If we write Warsaw-Brest-Litovski, it is natural to suppose that three places are meant; the and solution is accordingly the best.
At Bow-street, Robert Marsh, greengrocer, of Great Western-road, Harrow-road, was charged....—Times.
Great-Western Road, Harrow Road. Bow-street, as at (not in) shows, is a compound epithet for police-court understood, and has a right to its hyphen. By 3, there is no need for a hyphen after Harrow, and by 1, if unnecessary, it is undesirable. As to the other road, there are three possibilities. The Times is right if there is a Western Road of which one section is called Great, and the other Little. If the name means literally the great road that runs west, there should be no hyphen at all. If the road is named from the Great Western Railway, or from the Great-Western Hotel, our version is right.
Cochin China waters.—Times.
By 4, Cochin China gives Cochin-China waters.
Within the last ten days two Anglo-South Americans have been in my office arranging for passages to New Zealand.—Times.
Anglo-South-Americans is the best that can be done. What is really wanted is Anglo-SouthAmericans, to show that South goes more closely with America. But it is too hopelessly contrary to usage at present.
The proceeds of the recent London-New York loan.—Times. (London and New-York loan.)
A good, generous, King Mark-like sort of man.—Times.
King-Mark-like, in default of KingMark-like. But the addition of -like to compound names should be avoided.
The Fugitive Slave-law in America before the rebellion.—-H. Sidgwick. (Fugitive-Slave law.)
The steam-cars will have 16-horse power engines.—Times.
Steam cars is better, by 3, and 1. And 16-horsepower engines. We can do this time what the capitals of American and Mark prevented in the previous compounds.
Entirely gratuitous hyphens.
One had a male-partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque.—Meredith.
Gluttony is the least-generous of the vices.—Meredith.
A little china-box, bearing the motto ‘Though lost to sight, to memory dear,’ which Dorcas sent her as a remembrance.—Eliot.
This evidently means a box made of china. A box to hold china would have the hyphen properly, and there are many differentiations of this kind, of which black bird, as opposed to black-bird or blackbird, is the type.
Bertie took up a quantity of waste-papers, and thrust them down into the basket.—E. F. Benson.
This is probably formed by a mistaken step backwards from waste-paper basket, where the hyphen is correct, as explained in 3.
In phrases like wet and dry fly fishing, compounded of wet-fly fishing and dry-fly fishing, methods vary. For instance: