Some Thoughts on Dashes

Some Thoughts on Dashes Some Thoughts on Dashes Some Thoughts on Dashes By Maeve Maddox A reader wonders about the use of dashes to replace colons: More and more I see dashes (of various sorts) used to do the work you say that the colon should do: introduce a word, phrase, clause, list, or quotation after a complete sentence. Is either acceptable? I can’t find an example of a dash used to introduce a quotation, but its use in place of a colon to introduce a word, phrase, clause, or list is common: â€Å"Nonetheless,† he added, â€Å"just having these recordings is not going to be sufficient† to make any definitive conclusions about the cause of the crash- a process that could take weeks, if not months.† Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals- mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like. Coming at the end of a sentence in this way, the use of a dash is not as jarring to me as its increasingly popular use to replace commas or parentheses within a sentence: The study’s authors hypothesized that material gains made through early agricultural success- a proxy for wealth- gave smaller groups of related men the reproductive upper hand for generations. Boko Haram has widened its efforts from capturing foreigners- who can be ransomed off for big bucks- to targeting mass numbers of young women and children who can  be put to other uses. Commas or parentheses would do just fine in each example. The choice to replace commas or parentheses with a dash should be made with a clear understanding of the effect desired. Explanatory information meant for readers who may need help with a concept can go in parenthesis: The study’s authors hypothesized that material gains made through early agricultural success (a proxy for wealth) gave smaller groups of related men the reproductive upper hand for generations. Information relevant to the sentence, but of secondary importance can go between commas: Boko Haram has widened its efforts from capturing foreigners, who can be ransomed off for big bucks, to targeting mass numbers of young women and children who can  be put to other uses. Dashes are appropriate when the purpose is to startle the reader with an unexpected interruption that provides a peripheral thought: His chisel was one of the weapons used- not that he could help that, poor fellow- and no doubt you will want to ask him questions. The dash is an attention-getting punctuation mark that can be used to change the tone of a sentence. Dashes are like the unexpected chords in The Surprise Symphony: they jerk the reader into wakefulness. They are most effective when not overused. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Addressing A Letter to Two People50 Idioms About Arms, Hands, and FingersEach vs. Both

How Does Reedsy Select its Publishing Professionals

How Does Reedsy Select its Publishing Professionals How Does Reedsy Select its Publishing Professionals? "How do you select the editors and designers featured on your marketplace?" This is one of the questions we get most often at Reedsy, probably because we can’t help bragging (loudly and often) about the quality of our publishing professionals.The curation of our marketplace is what makes us a truly incomparable player in the industry. Over 15,000 publishing professionals (editors, designers, illustrators, publicists, marketers and translators) have applied to be featured on our site. Currently, only 1,100 have been accepted.Reviewing thousands of profilesSo how do people apply, exactly? It's pretty simple: professionals only need to sign up through our landing page and indicate during the onboarding process that they want to register as "professionals". Once signed up, we prompt them to fill in a Reedsy profile - a page that compiles all their professional information, from work experience to portfolio items to work philosophy.These profiles are public, which means Reedsy pro fessionals can use them as websites or landing pages for all professional activity. More importantly, profiles form the core of our quality control process.First, we make sure professionals who are serious about being listed on Reedsy complete their profile as exhaustively as possible. Our curation team reviews all new, fully finished profiles once a week, at which point they separate the ones who merit inclusion on our marketplace from the rest. If you visit our service pages, you will see a few examples of professionals who have been accepted, and will be able to click through to their public profiles.Our selection criteriaSo how do we determine who to activate? Naturally, the decision is ultimately somewhat subjective as it is made by actual people (not algorithms), but our curation team uses a list of tangible criteria to keep the decision as objective as possible. Here are a few criteria all our professionals meet:be a full-time professional in the field you are applying for (e diting, design, publicity, translation, marketing, ghostwriting)demonstrate experience on at least 10 published books that are well-reviewed on Amazon Goodreadshave experience in every "genre" listed in the profilehave 5+ years experience in your professionThe Reedsy marketplace is competitive, which means professionals meeting all the above criteria are not automatically accepted. These are "minimum criteria" that need to be supplemented with one or more of the following:significant experience working at a renowned traditional publishing companysignificant experience working as a freelance contractor for a renowned traditional publishing companyhistory of high-quality work with a bestselling author, or on a bestselling bookreceipt of a distinguished award in your fieldSome of our editors have worked on books by authors such as Ken Follett, Isabel Allende, George R.R. Martin, Hugh Howey or J.K. Rowling. Because of this, we tend to become more and more selective as our marketplace k eeps growing, and our current acceptance rate is at 1%. That said, we're always on the lookout for more professionals who meet our criteria.Naturally, we do our best to ensure that all information entered by the professionals on their profiles is accurate, and will often verify our professionals' portfolios by searching books' "acknowledgements" sections for mentions of their editors and cover artists.A constant quality controlSo, once I’m in, I’m in forever? Well, not quite. Our curation work doesn’t stop once the professional has been accepted based on the information provided in their profile. We closely monitor our professionals’ work through Reedsy and regularly survey our authors at the end of their collaborations.On rare occasions, we've had to â€Å"deactivate† one of our professionals because of unprofessional behavior, but we have not hesitated to do so - nor will we in the future. Reedsy acts as a third-party guarantor for authors in th eir collaborations on the platform, so it is our duty to keep monitoring our professionals’ work on the marketplace.Our team also keeps an eye on the marketplace to ensure we have sufficient professionals listed and available in each genre. It is by successfully juggling supply and demand that we have been able to build a safe haven for authors and professionals alike - and that’s what Reedsy is all about.