| > “two dashes set closed on the side of the main sentence and set open on the side of set-off phrase”. Eh, I don't think that's the interpretation the author was going for. The author wanted to show two different ways of approximating a dash, and he had limited options. If he'd done this-- for example-- he would have been showing one way, not two. If he'd done this --for example-- you would have called it "two dashes set open on the side of the main sentence and set closed on the side of set-off phrase". If he'd done this-- for example -- it would have been too obvious (on the same line). I suppose he could have done this-- for example--but I still think that would have been too obvious. You're not supposed to see it on a first read. > And the third use (in the heading and later in the body) is seperating parts where neither is a mid-sentence appositive phrase, and uses open-on-both sides. So that's not a different way of doing the same thing, it's a different way of doing a semantically different thing. It's a different use of a dash, but it's still a place where you'd typically use a dash. ----- Edit: You know what, thinking about it again—perhaps both interpretations are valid. That almost adds to the effectiveness of the whole thing. |