{"id":1723,"date":"2014-07-10T08:15:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T13:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1723"},"modified":"2014-06-16T08:23:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T13:23:40","slug":"the-em-dash-and-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2014\/07\/the-em-dash-and-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"The em dash and Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n

I still learn new things. I still want to learn new things.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I recently learned how to make the em dash and en dash characters in OS X with keyboard shortcuts. I no longer have to go to the “insert symbols” function to insert these special characters.<\/p>\n

One of the disappointing results of this is that I have yet to find anyone who cares about the em dash or en dash or recognizes any value in them.<\/p>\n

There are, however, more encouraging results to report. One is that I never knew how to do this before. Now I know and I can complete my writing in less time than before. Hence, I have improved one aspect of my writing. As I consider that, I can denote aspects of my writing that I have improved each of the last thirty years.<\/p>\n

There are (at least) two consequences of this experience:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Don’t wait until you know how to do it all correctly before trying to do it.<\/li>\n
  2. Don’t settle for what you now know.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    A third consequence is that when I meet someone who doesn’t know how to make the em dash with keyboard shortcuts, I remind myself that there was a time, and that time lasted for decades, when I didn’t know how to do that either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Dwayne Phillips I still learn new things. I still want to learn new things. I recently learned how to make the em dash and en dash characters in OS X with keyboard shortcuts. I no longer have to go to the “insert symbols” function to insert these special characters. One of the disappointing results […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,20,5],"tags":[207,142,128],"class_list":["post-1723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-learning","category-writing","tag-education","tag-learning","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1724,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1723\/revisions\/1724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}