Saw This On Instagram And I Couldn’t Agree More.

Hyphens, en Dashes and em Dashes

Oh- and let’s not forget the minus sign, that thing on your keyboard that can be misused as any one of the above! 

It took me a long time to understand the differences. 

The minus sign                         (-)

The hyphen                               (-)

The en dash                              (–)

The em dash                            (—)

Visually, not much in it, is there?  

But oh what a difference the length makes! 

The minus sign is a mathematical symbol. That’s it. Don’t misuse it for anything else.

The hyphen is used to join two elements to form a compound word, like  self-restraint. Numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine should also be hyphenated when they’re spelled out. Sherlock Holmes-Watson or John Watson-Holmes (interesting to know which one wins in the battle). You should also use a hyphen in a compound modifier before a noun, as in The Crossed Keys Inn was a dog-friendly pub.

The shorter en dash  is used when describing ranges and with the meaning “to” in phrases like “Dover–Calais crossing.” It applies to ranges of numbers, such as times, page numbers, or scores (I’ll schedule you from 4:30–5:00). That said, outside of formally printed documents, it is increasingly being replaced with a hyphen, so if you miss this one, Sherlock won’t hang you for it. 

The longer em dash (—) is about as wide as the letter M (duh, now I get why it’s called this). It’s used to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence.  An em dash is most often used to indicate a pause in a sentence. It’s stronger than a comma, but weaker than a period or semicolon. 

You can use a pair of em dashes to draw special attention to parenthetical information, as in

Sherlock—who was wearing the same purple shirt of sex—entered the room carrying his violin..

You can use a single em dash to add explanatory or amplifying information, especially when the information is surprising:

I opened the door and there she stood—Eurus, my long lost sister.

Em dashes can also signal a sudden interruption, particularly in dialogue:

“Wait! I forgot to tell you—” The door slammed shut between us and I missed whatever John was trying to say.

Interestingly, there is no firm rule about spaces around the em dash (either word—word or word — word). It’s a matter of style. Whichever style you choose, use it consistently throughout your document.

The em dash is a relatively artistic punctuation mark, compared to the more technical hyphen and en dash, both of which need to be used accurately in legal contracts, for example. 

I don’t know what little cat needs to hear this but. it is Not Dinner Time. you are not going to starve and it will be okay.

Half of reading silmarillion fanfiction is getting annoyed that your favourite elf is being characterised wrong, and then realising said elf is only mentioned by name 9 times in the entire silmarillion and the version of them you've created in their head is not in fact their actual character

SO

‘Fin(-dë, -ë)’ means hair in Quenya right? And I’ve often thought that was a little silly, like Tolkien straight up named the most important family in the Silm after ‘Hairy Guy’, and the names just got weirder when translated out after that. Why did the man do this? He knew what ‘Fin’ meant, it wasn’t an accident, and he was so meticulous and purposeful in his naming.

I always assumed it had something to do with the Elves and their hair thing, BUT- I was going through some old Latin textbooks and guess what vocab word I’d forgotten?

‘Caesaries’, which means ‘hair’. As in the likely root for the family name ‘Caesar’, of Julius, Augustus, etc. fame. As in ‘Caesar’, the word historically translated and used to mean ‘king’ all across Eurasia for thousands of years.

Tolkien named the House of Finwë after the House of Caesar.

zuko and sokka can be friends

Cartographic Practices of Arda: Men

[overthinking fantasy cartography series: Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men]

o   Men might seem like the most straightforward group to analyze, but they’re not. Why should we assume that humans in Arda use the same cartographic practices that we do? For that matter, who is “we”? Cartography is not a set of objective and universally or historically standard techniques; it is not an exact science; the modern maps treated as real or correct maps are not the one true way to represent space. Tolkien’s Edain may be based on Western Europeans, but they’re still fantasy, and there’s no reason that their cartography should look like Western Europe’s

Further, Western European cartography wasn’t standardized in terms of techniques or even units of measure until early states began to want visual representations of their territory that would make them more easily taxed and managed, especially as enclosure policies took off, market forces became increasingly dominant, and controlling a standardized populace became an important goal of government

o    Western cartography is also deeply intertwined with maps as a colonial and imperialist tool, which impacted the development of mapping practices, the lands those maps reflected, and the ways in which space was imagined. I think that governing, planning military operations, maybe taxing the populace, and carrying out various expansionist programs would be the activities in Middle-earth driving cartographic development among Men, similar to Europe, but it’s not inevitable at all that the maps they make for such things would look the same. Maybe they could make maps of layered symbols rather than mimicking on-the-ground spatial relations, or paintings whose details correspond to geographic referents, or physical models of space a la Polynesian stick charts (although I do think there’s an artifacts-have-politics argument to be made about which cartographic practices are most conducive to certain uses and conceptions of space, but I digress)

o   But presuming Men do make maps in the same vein as those found in the books (though I should say I don’t take those as being real in-world maps, per se), what would they map? And how would they map it?

Starting with the Edain and the kingdoms they founded, since their influence is so centered in LOTR, I think their cartography would develop as a formal practice in Númenor, and prior to that, they might use the maps of Elven realms of which they were vassals, or might create their own spatial navigation techniques, not necessarily cartographic

Likely, considerable influence of Elvish cartography on Númenórean maps would carry over to Gondor and Arnor. While Elves might only need maps as reference for memorization, or for military strategy planning, I think Men’s reproduction of and reliance on maps would increase greatly, especially during the colonial age of Númenor and the realms they established. Cartography could become a more established discipline; populations could be managed more effectively, at least under the more competent rulers; similar to early-state-formation Europe, you could see cartography as an increasingly important tool of state 

(this is a long one, so the rest is under the cut)

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Please consider: If Tolkien wasn't a coward Feanor would have been female and it would have been way cooler. a) Gives some real weight to the idea that Feanor was worried the crown would go to one of Finwe's other kids. b) More ladies in Tolkien, always a plus. c) You'd better believe Feanor's the greatest craftsperson of the Noldor- she made 7 of them! (Also the sheer drama of newly single mum Feanor and her 7 boys in Middle Earth) d) Silmarils as kids2.0 e) Blacksmith lady hot

Lady Feanor would indeed be awesome. The historical part of my brain can't help but think that critics of the time would have unfortunately interpreted ambitious kick butt single mom Feanor as a prime example of the "monstrous woman" type, ala Medea or something, who "got what was coming to her" in the end, so in a way I'm glad that the Prof. decided to write Feanor as a man so that we didn't have to deal with that nonsense.

I can't help but wonder if he'd lived at a later date if he might have considered female Feanor, I mean, this is a man who took one look at one is Shakespeare's most famous plays and said, "the answer to the prophesy is a C-section?? Booooo! Macbeth should have been killed by a woman! (And also the trees should have actually come alive)" and "its bogus that Orpheus turned around after all that and Eurydice had to die! Rip to them but if i were trapped in the underworld my wife would be different!"

And then proceeded to write his own genderbent fix it fic of both of those perennial works x)

So yeah, I think if the character had come into his head as female then Tolkien would have 100% been down with it

They had overnight flower delivery in the 1890s??

idril is the only person who thinks turgon is funny

Kids 🤝 autistic people

Blunt honesty