Re: Article on Finno-Ugric in the Economist


Ar an seachtú lá is fiche de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Jukka K. Korpela:

> > > > Whoa -- a spaced en-dash is _British_ style, and a closed-up em-dash
> > > > is _American_ style, and The Economist is a British magazine!
> > >
> > > Isn't The Economist the British magazine that also uses the US
> > > convention for numbers in the billions and trillions?
> >
> > The UK took up that convention three decades ago or so.
>
> Which UK,

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

> which convention?

The US convention for numbers in the billions and trillions.

> Two conventions were mentioned. [You seem to mean the dash issue.] Can you
> please cite the authority that has the right to express the opinion of
> the United Kingdom in such matters, or cite a reliable study that shows
> that the population of the United Kingdom has approved such a convention?

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxbill00.html :

“[...] in 1974 [...] Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced to the House of
Commons that the meaning of "billion" in papers concerning Government
statistics would thenceforth be 10^9, in conformity with U.S. usage.

Despite this, the U.S. meaning is still rare outside journalism and
finance, [...]”

Which is to say, the US meaning is still rare outside those circles that
have occasion to the word.

> > Jack Lynch--zombie Irish Taoiseach teaching English at Rutgers!--says
> > spaces around the dash are a matter of house
> > style. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/d.html#dash
>
> Sorry, but anyone who writes that an em dash has the width of "m" cannot
> be taken seriously in matters of dash usage.

Or maybe he’s been exposed to different publishers ...

> Besides, using spaces around an em dash is just pointless (though it was
> previously common in Finnish too). The spaces around an en dash
> compensate for the shortness of the dash as compared with an em dash. You
> would mix two typographic traditions for no good reason.

It’s the only convention used in the Livre de Poche books I’ve seen (in
French); I’ve just confirmed it with their _Apostille au Nom de la Rose._

> The original dash issue here was the use of the em dash without spaces in a
> quotation purported to be Finnish. That's simply absolutely wrong.

Is it absolutely wrong to use ASCII quotation marks for a piece of German
text cited in English? If not, what’s the difference with your case?

> A quotation presented in quotation marks shall be a verbatim quotation,
> including the original punctuation. (It was not a quotation at all, just a
> distorted phrase.)

If you’re using “shall” in its specialised internet RFC meaning, then
sure. If you’re using it descriptively, nope, that is not so. Cf. _Bulletin
de la société de linguistique de Paris, 1871_, p. clxxiv:

M. Whitley Stokes, qui me transmet cette explication, la regarde comme
très-probable et fournit, dans la langue même du pays, des analogies à cette
perversion du sens étymologique et original :
« I think it very likely, dit-il, that _mahaut_ ＝ _mahâmâtra ‘man of great
wealth’ is merely an ironical title. […]

(punctuation as in original, except that use underscores surrounding a word
instead of italicising it.) Or, look at the OED citations for esprit
d’escalier--none of them use guillemets.

--
I AM IN JAIL AND ALLOWED SEND ONLY ONE CABLE SINCE WAS ARRESTED WHILE
MEASURING FIFTEEN FOOT WALL OUTSIDE PALACE AND HAVE JUST FINISHED COUNTING
THIRTY EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDERED TWENTY TWO NAMES WHOS WHO IN MIDEAST.
.

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