--

Quoth Wikipedia: "Because early comic book letterers were not aware of the typographic convention of replacing a typewritten double hyphen with an em dash, the double hyphen became traditional in American comics. This practice has continued despite the development of computer lettering."

So that's where I got that from! My high school essays, printed out in thin dot-matrix grey - my earliest fanfics, too - were full of --s used where a semicolon might've been more appropriate.

Wait a minute

I'm ill (and missing a party - same old same old). I'm knackered and wobbly - feverish and fatigued. For the last two or three days I've been headachey and have had some tummy trouble - frequent signs that I've got a bug coming on. Or so I thought:

I've long assumed that the minor intestinal shenanigans is just a side effect of having a cold (from swallowing germs or whatever, idk). The thing is, I don't have any cold symptoms - no cough, no runny nose, no sore throat.

What if this is actually a flareup of my mild Crohns disease? I may have been misinterpreting it for literally decades! If so, I'm very lucky - for many sufferers, flareups mean pain and bleeding; whereas in my case past experience indicates that it'll all sort itself out in a day or two.

(Note to self: most recent period had started on 30 December.)