Refugee thread!

[Aliza]

Bah. I have to explain to a whole new group of people what the dash is. Meh.

I was trying to be respectful...I mean, given the topic, as respectful as possible...I'll show myself out.  

You're fine, Anjele. I'm not planning on changing how I spell it just because I joined a new forum. I explained it to TTA, and I'll explain it to AF. It was going to come out one way or another.

Oh man. Now I’m curious.

Jews typically use a dash in place of the o in the word "God."

We're not afraid of typing out the word "God," and we don't think G-d is going to somehow be offended or send us to hell; we don't even believe in hell. It's not a sin to type the o, and I don't have to sacrifice a cow or say a special blessing to ask for forgiveness.

It's like a courtesy because the four letter Hebrew tetragrammaton should, according to our tradition, never be erased. But if you skip a letter, then you never used the tetragrammaton in the first place, so it doesn't matter if it's erased. We apply that logic to English even though "God" is only a representative of the tetragrammaton.