Let's get another hyphen post going

Corinthianblue said:

“I would like to see records of all the men banished in the past—what shall we say?—six months?”

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“I would like to see records of all the men banished in the past--what shall we say--six months?"

One question mark. You were right about the two sets of hyphens. In a sentence,you should be able to take away the words within the sets and it will still be a complete sentence.

I'd get rid of the hyphens completely. They simply aren't needed.

Obviously no one cares to mention the fact--though I'm sure most know--this thread discusses the use of dashes, not hyphens.

Webster defines a hyphen as "a mark (-) used between the parts of a compound word or the syllables of a divided word. . . ."

In cursive writing, a dash is a "stroke with a pen . . . punctuation marking a break in thought."

In print, it's a single line about as long as an "m."

The confusion over what to call dashes or hyphens may arise because early typewriters had no "em dash," so the typist inserted two unspaced hyphens between parts separated by a dash.

Maryn said:

I don't often disagree with Stormie, but I do now. (Maryn ducks.)

I'd write it this way: “I would like to see records of all the men banished in the past—what shall we say, six months?”

Maryn, disagreeable

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He-He! It's okay, Maryn. So don't go hiding. I promise I won't get all "stormie" !

Anway, I originally thought as you did for the sentence, but reread it. The person speaking isn't talking about the past, but about how many months. The past three months, the past sixth months....

I would give a definite no to "in the past—what shall we say, six months?" There's no grammar theory I know in which a — and a , go together to separate out part of a sentence. I think what you have in the original post was fine, plus or minus the second ? I think this is kind of a subjective point, and there's no set-in-stone rule for it. Except no — and ,

The original bothers me a little because of the two question marks, but it would probably work in a novel... in fact, I've seen that sort of thing in novels and it didn't slow me down at all. It's clear enough and we get a good sense of the speaker's inflection.

Stormie's version is an improvement, IMO, because it leaves out one question mark without any loss of meaning or inflection. It's cleaner, less distracting.

Maryn's version is the best, though; we get the inflection, but in the tightest, most concise package yet.

I don't know... one thing I do know is that I hate redundant, unnecessarily-hyphenated, redundant words.