I’m sorry, was it purposeful to replace the “Don’t Shoot!” on the gaming forum? I noticed it a few weeks back.
And jesus, what’s up with that ellipsis?
Probably a Half-Life 4 announcement!
Ha, I never noticed that ellipsis. Mark Asher put a period after it! How conscientious! :)
-Tom
Well, I was referring more to there being an ellipsis at all, since “I’m with the science team!” is a complete sentence. But yes, that too.
If I recall correctly, the thought behind “I’m with the science team” was cut off. But, yeah, I guess an em-dash might have been more appropriate.
-Tom
I don’t think anything was ever cut off. It was simply a call out to Half-Life by recognizing a popular moment in the game as a way of hanging an evocative phrase on the door to the gaming forum. As I recall I quoted whatever text source I found. In retrospect an em-dash would have better conveyed the moment in the game but I simply cut and pasted without much thinking. It’s a bit ironic to me thinking about it now because I tend to overuse em dashes in my own writing.
Also, even talking about em-dashes sounds like a bunch of retired printers grousing about the age of Twitter over their Egg McMuffins at McDonald’s. How many people even know what an em-dash is these days?
No, that would imply an abrupt change of thought. An ellipsis can be used as a break in thought, but it indicates uncertainty. So unless there’s a momentary pause while trying to figure out what excuse to give so as not to be shot, I wouldn’t suggest that either.
The guy asking not to be shot because he’s with the science team does indeed have “an abrupt change of thought”. As in, he is abruptly deprived of the capacity for thought. :)
-Tom
Great, I’ve been tooshed.
Oye, are we actually talking about this now? Okay, let’s do this. Both the hyphen and the ellipsis are used to indicate an incomplete thought, with the hyphen indicating interruption, and the ellipsis indicating trailing off. But in Half-Life, “I’m with the science team!” is neither of these. It is, as spoken in the game, a complete, uninterrupted sentence.
On my team (not the science team), pretty much everyone, since we deal with academic subject matter. If we don’t keep our em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens straight, we hear about it from the client.