WRITING TIP!

--THE DASH--

The dash isolates parenthetical words and phrases. It is sometimes used in place of parentheses or commas. Dashes are more emphatic than commas and parentheses. Note that the proper way to indicate a dash in manuscript format is through two consecutive hyphens without spaces before--or after.

. . . THE ELLIPSIS . . .

The ellipsis (. . .) should be printed with a space before and after each period, except where the ellipsis occurs at the end of a quotation. There’s no space between the final period and the closing quotation mark. And never include more than three dots.

When you fail to print it this way, editors must mark your manuscript to signal the typesetter to do so. Anything you can do to save an editor time and trouble is bound to help you in the long run.

BEWARE GRAMMAR-CHECKER SOFTWARE!

If you use any type of grammar-checking software don't presume that it's automatically accurate. Most such programs presume that you're writing something of a more formal nature, such as reports, and will often advise you, for instance, not to use contractions. Keep in mind that there are different types of writing and no grammar-checking software that I know of is capable of adjusting to different types of writing. The best advice I can give you is don't use such software at all! Learn grammar rules yourself and you'll always feel comfortable knowing that you've addressed all issues properly.