Brackets and parentheses are punctuation marks used to set apart a segment of text from the surrounding text. (By the way, parentheses is the plural form of parenthesis).
You are, of course, aware of the fact that British English and American English do not always agree. BE lift is elevator in AE; a BE pavement is a sidewalk in AE. Holiday is vacation, handbag is purse, queue is line, tube is subway, etc.
When it comes to brackets and parentheses, the situation is just as confusing.
These marks
are called brackets or round brackets in British English. In American English they are parentheses.
Brackets in American English are called square brackets in British English. They look like this:
Then we have these:
They are called braces in both British and American English, but in BE they are also called curly brackets.
Historically, the earliest form of brackets were angle brackets or chevrons. They look like this:
In a later post we take a look at how to use these brackets and parentheses.
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark in the Latin and some other alphabets. It is used to indicate quotations, to show that one or more letters are left out (contractions), to show the possessive form (genitive) of names and nouns, and to mark the plural of single letters.
QUOTATION
In UK English, single quotation marks are commonly used (even if the US English system is also accepted), while US English prefers double quotation marks.
UK English: ’Welcome to London’, he said.
US English: A man appeared in the doorway asking, ”Is there a restroom somewhere here?”
When a quote appears inside another quote, the opposite style of quotation marks is used:
UK English: The woman looked at the policeman and said, ’All I heard was ”I can’t find my keyes”’.
US English: The woman looked at the officer and said, ”All I heard was ’I can’t find my keyes.’”
In a contraction, an apostrophe represents one or more letters that have been omitted.
I’ve I have I’d I had or I would He’s He is They’re They are She can’t She cannot You mustn’t You must not Singin’ in the rain Singing in the rain O’Leary [descendant] of Leary Rock’n’roll Rock and roll
An apostrophe can represent thousand:
15’ = 15 000
An apostrophe can replace the first two numbers in a year:
This was popular in the ’80s = in the 1980s
POSSESSIVE
An apostrophe is used with an s after names or nouns to show ownership or close connection.
This is the boy’s room Let me introduce my wife’s best friend
In the plural, there is no s after the apostrophe:
This is the boys’ room
Especially in spoken language, the plural is expressed using of: This is the room of the boys.
Not quite right…
PLURAL OF LETTERS
An apostrophe is used to mark the plural of single letters:
It’s hard to distinguish between your g’s and q’s.
Mind your p’s and q’s (be careful about what you say or do).
Don’t confuse an apostrophe with an accent! Read more here.
A hyphen and a dash are two different things—and there are two dashes. Confusing? Let’s try and sort it out.
This is a hyphen : – This is an en dash:– This is an em dash: —
HYPHEN
To begin with, in your native language (other than English) you can perhaps insert a hyphen when a word has to be split up at the end of a line. This is very unusual in English texts. And nowadays it is unusual in any text written on a computer, since the line breaks are inserted automatically. Even when a text is right-justified (the text is aligned with the right margin), the word processor adjusts the line length by changing the spaces between words. So we need not worry about this use of the hyphen.
A much more common use of the hyphen is in compounds, inside words or word combinations. Re-establish is a word made up of the prefix re and the verb establish. It means establish again.
We use a hyphen in compounds such as self-esteem, fifty-six, far-reaching, blue-green, sister-in-law and state-of-the-art. However, there are many compounds in English that are written without a hyphen—financial manager, production plan, information technology, etc. And many compounds are written in one word—airport, football, input, headache, etc. You can read more about compounds here.
Not much correct here…
THE EN DASH
An en dash has its name from the fact that it is as wide as the letter N. Consequently, the longer dash is called em dash.
The en dash (–) is used to indicate a range of, for example, dates, years or pages in a book:
You can find his most famous speech on pages 149–153. Barack Obama was President of the USA 2009–2017. The conference was held 31 August–2 September.
The en dash can also indicate a relation or connection:
His research focuses on human–robot collaboration. They usually took the Paris–Brussels train. They had a close mother–daughter relationship.
Notice that you cannot use a dash if you write between or from. It is wrong to write *between 2009–2017 or *from 149–153. (For the use of the asterisk here see the note at the end of this page.)
Obama’s presidency was between 2009 and 2017. The speech is printed on the pages from 149 to 153.
Looks like an em dash here, which is wrong
THE EM DASH
The em dash (—) is longer than a hyphen or an en dash. The em dash indicates a break or an insert in a sentence. It can be used in pairs like brackets or alone to separate the end of a sentence from the main part.
Most of their garden products—lawn mowers, grass trimmers, hedge trimmers and leaf blowers—were on sale in October. His fame had spread far and wide—he had shown that he was a very talented footballer—and he could now sign a new and better contract. I had better put on winter tyres right away—there’ll be snow any day now.
There are no spaces before and after a hyphen, an en dash or an em dash.
However, some British style guides recommend to use an en dash with spaces before and after it instead of an em dash. If you write for a journal, make sure to consult its guide for authors.
In my next blog entry I will show you where to find dashes on a computer keyboard.
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