Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

I've looked all over my keyboard, and I only have one thing that could be called either.

Unless you are talking about that salt substitute...
 

You just provided us with such a nice example of the use of each, I can easily imagine an ER-authored grammar book.

And would that be an em dash or an en dash? ;-)
 

Sitting here with a raised eyebrow, thinking you better be talking about wire copy.
 

Wire copy is as pure as the driven snow compared to syndicated topical columnists who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag and are handled by marketers, not editors. Grrr.

Long day. Long week. Two more days to vacation!

Wherein I will do what? Research! Write! I'm a dang glutton, I tells ya.

And, thanks, Kiki! :-)

Miss C., wouldn't that be Mrs. Dash? And why ain't it Ms. Dash? ;-)
 

Because Ms. Dash is to damn cool or busy working to cook.

This reminds me of the 16th century argument by the church as to whether the zero was a numerical place holder or represented the concept of "nothing" which by the churches edict could not exist, which of course means nothing could not be nothing.(they also had trouble with vaccuum" ) Zero finally won as nothing because it allowed for higher compound interest rates after the church decided that it should revoke the usery laws because it did not want just the Jews running the only banks in Europe and thus adopted the Arabic numeral system which PBS reminded me last night was actually the Indian Numeric system, except for the fact that in India the zero was just a place holder and it took the arabs to invent nothing and call it zero.
So for us anti-gramerianuts here is the definition of:
Hyphen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A hyphen ( -, or ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. It is used both to join words and to separate syllables. It is often confused with a dash ( –, —, ― ), which is longer. Hyphenation is the use of hyphens.
Rules and customs of usage:
Traditionally, the hyphen has been used in several ways. A definitive collection of hyphen rules does not exist, as evidenced by the accepted convention that adjectives of color are left open, without a hyphen. Therefore, the writer or editor should consult a manual of style or dictionary of his/her preference.

Except for noun-noun and adverb-adjective compound modifiers, when a compound modifier appears before a term, the compound modifier is generally hyphenated in order to prevent any possible misunderstanding, such as light-blue paint, twentieth-century invention, cold-hearted person, and award-winning show. Without the hyphens, there is potential confusion about whether "light" applies to "blue" or "paint", whether "twentieth" applies to "century" or "invention", etc.
Hyphens are generally not used in noun-noun or adverb-adjective compound modifiers, because no such confusion is possible; for example:
government standards organization and department store manager
wholly owned subsidiary and quickly moving vehicle
Hyphenation is also common with adjective-noun compound modifiers, but arguably less generally. For example, real-world example; left-hand drive. Where the adjective-noun phrase would be plural standing alone, it usually becomes singular and hyphenated when modifying another noun. For example, four days becomes four-day week.
Two-word names of numbers less than one hundred are hyphenated. For instance, the number 23 should be written twenty-three, and 123 should be written one hundred [and] twenty-three. (The and is generally included in British English but often omitted in American English.)
Hyphens are occasionally used to denote syllabification, as in syl-lab-i-fi-ca-tion. In most dictionaries, a middle dot, sometimes called a "hyphenation point", is used for this purpose, as in syl·lab·i·fi·ca·tion.
Hyphens are sometimes used in English to denote syllable breaks, such as when a repeated vowel is pronounced on its own rather than silent or merged in a dipthong, as in 'co-operate' or 're-enlist', where some other languages (and some English authorities) use a diaresis: 'noël' or 'coöperate'.
Some words are hyphenated in order to distinguish them from other words which would otherwise be homographs. (Compare "resign" and "re-sign.")

((Lobo-note: they actually mean the same damn thing))

If a word beginning on one line of text continues into the following line, a hyphen will usually be inserted immediately before the split. Note that the details of doing this properly are complex and language-dependent, and interact with other typesetting practices: see justification and hyphenation algorithm.
Some married couples compose a new surname for their new family by combining their two surnames together with a hyphen in between. Jane Doe and John Smith might become Jane and John Smith-Doe, for instance. More often, however, only the woman hyphenates her birth surname with her husband's surname.
A hyphen may be used in quotations to imply the spelling of a word such as "W-O-R-D spells word."
However, the use of the hyphen has in general been steadily declining, both in popular writing and in scholarly journals. Its use is almost always avoided by those who write advertising copy or labels on packaging, since they are often more concerned with visual cleanliness than semantic clarity. However, it is still used in most newspapers and magazines, so people remain accustomed to seeing and understanding it.

Traditionally, an en dash replaces the hyphen in hyphenated compounds if either of its constituent parts is either already hyphenated or contains a space.
 

I love it! The AP Style Book has a couple of pages on how to use a comma, too.

:-)

colonhyphencloseparenthesis
 

LOL. Oklahoma was "Latin America" before it was America, I think.

Necesito estudiar mi espanol de la escuela! (Tres anos! Pero se solamente un pocito!)

Como se dice "fixin'to?"
 

Fixin-to = hasta lo hago
 

Coworker says "I'm fixing to" is "soy listo a" -- "I'm ready to."

Me gusta.
 

Y soy listo a comer!
 

I'm confused, drlobojo. How do "resign" and "re-sign" mean the same thing? To my mind, one's when you step down from a job while the other is when you have to sign something again.
 

Kiki when you track sign back to its Latin root it basically means a seal or to seal.
resign= changing the seal
re-sign= changing the seal
Conotation perhaps, denotation nope.
reseal = re-seal ?
Check me.
I might be bull shitting.
 

I'll agree with you on the Latin signum as seal (or mark), but what I'm not convinced of is your assumption that the prefix "re" will mean the same in each case.

The OED has "re" as meaning both "back" and "again," which puts me back at my original distinction:

to give back a seal/mark
vs
to reapply a seal/mark

So wouldn't both be denotations, just dependent on the definition of the prefix?
 

Ok I was only half bullshitting.
Re-sign is a word, and re-seal is not a word just for the record. Aparently when you seal something it is always being sealed even if it is resealed. So why can you re-sign?
 

Sorry, can't believe this is even a post,ER.

Sheesh. If you don't know how to dash -- come one, dude -- then you're missin' the boat.

Sometimes, though, folks tend to use a dash when an elipse -- because it's a change of thought -- would work.

Before ya go on, I ain't got Internet at my future in-laws, with whom I'm stayin' for another month or so, and the computer at the office won't handle this page -- it's just too dadgum old. Hell, folks, I'm usin' Microsoft Word, circa 1992.

Folks who send in stuff from a newer version -- like letters to the editor, news releases, etc -- well, there stuff comes in all crooked. Apostrophes come in as commas and quotes ... I can't tell you about quotes, because they come in with all sorts of symbols: %%Hello, y,all.**

Hope to be gittin' that fixed soon.

Seems y'all are doin' well, though.

Keep on keepin' on.
 

I don't know, drlobojo. Doesn't make sense to me that you'd be able to sign something twice but not seal it twice.
 

OK, Drlobojo and Kiki -- y'all remindme of the difference between myself and Dr. ER when it comes to music.

She studied music and played cello in high school.

I chicken-pick my ol' guitar, by ear.

Likewise, I use grammar by ear, not by the book! :-)
 

That's revealing.