Grammar Pet Peeves: The Em Dash--Why Writers Should Use It More Sparingly

Slate Magazine:

According to the Associated Press Stylebook--Slate's bible for all things punctuation- and grammar-related--there are two main prose uses--the abrupt change and the series within a phrase--for the em dash.

Read the whole story: Slate Magazine

Comments

[Blarg]

05:33 PM on 06/30/2011

The em dash can make for a much swifter, cleaner read than using parentheses. For most writers, its limits are more instinctual than those of parentheses. Parentheses can tempt writers to be expansive within what should generally be either brief or rewritten to better fit into the rest of its sentence and paragraph. The em dash's abruptness points out to writer as well as reader that something chucked into a sentence is only a temporary detour, and that we'll all be getting back on track in a flash. Which is exactly how such things should be written.

It is best to write well enough to not "need" either em dashes or parentheses. It takes a little more forethought. But if you don't think of your reader, who will? And what, then, should he think of you?

[mikeodd]

12:38 PM on 05/29/2011

Ah! Thanks for the brilliant observation. I always thought it was just me! I must confess, Emily Dickinson's use of dashes is the main reason I don't enjoy her work.

[c-tom]

11:23 PM on 05/26/2011

Don't think we had em and en just plain dashes when I was in 6th grade and learned punctuation rules. Since handwriting tends to vary from one individual to another it would have been hard to tell different dashes apart.

[JDM73]

04:51 PM on 05/26/2011

I'll stick with my em dashes, thanks. If they were good enough for Henry James, they're good enough for me.

[taiwanjohn]

01:23 PM on 05/26/2011

I agree with the author that the em dash is overused. In most cases it's a lazy substitute for plain language and simple structure. But even that doesn't rise to the level of "peeve" in my book. What really annoys me is when people use a hyphen where an em dash should be.

In Mr. Butzier's 9th grade English class, we were taught that a dash should be written as "space-hyphen-hyphen-space" -- like this -- but nowadays I often see it written in such a way that it is indistinguishable from a single hyphen-like this.

Damn annoying -- and confusing too.

[HKB]

12:36 PM on 05/26/2011

I enjoy the Grammer Pet Peeves - I am the biggest peever and truely admire those that do it so right and so well all at the same time - I really love words and language - unfortunately being dyslexic really messes things up at time ! But it doesn't stop the fun !