Yet Another Question

[rosalinda-143.livejournal.com]

Well, more like "questions". Because I have two.

One: how would you write pm? Is is PM, P.M., p.m., or pm. Or do I just avoid using that in my writing?

Two: I'm not sure about hyphens ( - ). It's kind of hard to explain, but I'll try my best...

Here's a sample of a sentence from one of my short stories: I kept my bag in my lap. It kept all my belongings including two pairs of clothes–not including the ones I was wearing–and my wallet with my I.D. and the money I had made previously.

When I had my short story read by a beta they told me that I should have spaces between my hyphens, like so: I kept my beg in my lap. It kept all my belongings including two pairs of clothes - not including the ones I was wearing - and my wallet with my I.D. and the money I had made perviously.

My question is, what's the difference? I started doing that as I write, but when I read I see the the hyphens don't have any spaces in between? How do I know when to put spaces between the sentences and the hyphens?

Thanks to all in advanced!

~ J

Comments

[mari-mac1109.livejournal.com]

In the case of the sentence you posted, you want an em dash, not a hyphen. It's commonly represented by two hyphens like this -- and a lot of word processors (including Microsoft Word) will convert it into a dash for you. You do NOT need spaces on either side of the dash.

A hyphen is not appropriate for this usage.

An em dash can be used in the place of commas or parentheses. For example, you could also write that sentence:

I kept my beg in my lap. It kept all my belongings including two pairs of clothes (not including the ones I was wearing) and my wallet with my I.D. and the money I had made previously.

or

I kept my beg in my lap. It kept all my belongings including two pairs of clothes, not including the ones I was wearing, and my wallet with my I.D. and the money I had made previously.

All three are technically grammatically correct, so it comes to what punctuation is more effective stylistically. Each punctuation mark makes the sentence come across just a bit differently. In this case, I think you'd be right to go with the em dash! But be careful with the dash. A lot of writers will start to use it as a crutch and really end up overusing it. Be mindful and open to changing things around so you can get a nice variety in sentence structures and convey what you're writing about as best as possible! I find I write my first drafts with a lot of dashes when I'm writing quickly. When I'm editing and moving things around, most of the dashes get cut.

Here's a link with more info!

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/dashes.asp