Mormon Mentality - Thoughts and Asides by Peculiar People

By danithew

Feb. 27th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

Punctuation is important. The Book of Mormon uses dashes/hyphens quite a bit and the choice of an em dash versus an en dash makes a significant difference in how a particular passage may be read, pronounced and understood.

One particular construction in 1 Nephi Chapter 14:3 effectively demonstrates the difference and we should be careful how we read this verse out loud in the home or at church.

1 Nephi 14:3
And that great pit, which hath been digged for them by that great and abominable church, which was founded by the devil and his children, that he might lead away the souls of men down to hell—yea, that great pit which hath been digged for the destruction of men shall be filled by those who digged it, unto their utter destruction, saith the Lamb of God; not the destruction of the soul, save it be the casting of it into that hell which hath no end.

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1. Jason L.

Fri, Feb. 27 @ 4:55pm

Ok, I’ll go first and admit that I’m unclear on the difference here. Usually, I pay careful attention to the grammatical marks (even though it’s my understanding that they are not part of the original revealed text, but variable by edition). But I’m not very good with dashes and even after readying the Wikipedia entry I’m lost as to how this em dash should shape our reading and understanding of the particular passage. Could you elaborate?

2. Jacob J

Fri, Feb. 27 @ 5:22pm

Do I believe in this scripture? Hell-yea.

3. Jota G

Fri, Feb. 27 @ 5:53pm

Jason,

As a hyphen it would be, “hell-yea!”

If it were an en dash it would denote a course between Hell and “Yea,” perhaps Yea being a location nearest to Hell.

Given that it is an em dash, the dash indicates a break in the writer’s thought.

4. Jota G

Fri, Feb. 27 @ 5:55pm

Given that much of the punctuation of the BOM has changed over the course of its various publications, I’m not sure how much we can rely on punctuation to provide hidden meaning.

5. MCQ

Fri, Feb. 27 @ 7:23pm

“Hell-yea” is not an expression. “Hell-yeah” is. You don’t see much use of “yeah” in the scriptures, however. Can you imagine if you did?

6. DKL

Fri, Feb. 27 @ 9:13pm

I have a theory that we could update the Book of Mormon to sound quite modern if we just added an “h” to every instance of the word “yea”

7. Bookslinger

Sat, Feb. 28 @ 7:23am

The pulpit is one of the few places where one can legitimately use some swear words.

8. Jeff Bennion

Sun, Mar. 1 @ 12:34am

There was also an example Nibley pointed out about how versification can obscure/change meanings; he had one example from Pratt’s versification but I can’t seem to locate it now…

9. Orwell

Sun, Mar. 1 @ 3:21am

I don’t see how the distinction between an em-dash and an en-dash is relevant here. Don’t you mean the difference between an em-dash and a hyphen? (Yes, en-dashes are sometimes used in place of hyphens, but I don’t think this is one of those cases.)

Anyway, that said, “hell yeah” (or the anachronistic “hell yea”) as an exclamation is never hyphenated. However, if you use it as a noun, it can work: “The priests of Noah gave three “hell-yeahs” to King Noah’s suggestion that Abinadi be burned at the stake.”

Naturally, the New International Version of the Book of Mormon uses “hell-yeses.”

The Good News Translation of the Book of Mormon uses “hell-yeahs.”