Originally published at: Em dash defended | Boing Boing
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11 Likes
Roddy Doyle seems to get a lot of good use of 'em.
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huge stan/fan here–no spaces, please.
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Paging—captain—Kirk…
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I do find it annoying that MS WORD will automatically convert an n-dash to an m-dash. You don’t know me!!!
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I like the m-dash. I think it looks great, but the m-dash is the bane of the electronic format. It is never used with spaces, so it becomes a part of the 2 words it separates. Which means it screws up line wrapping, highlighting, AND test reading software.
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I wasn’t aware there was a controversy over the em dash. The em dash was explicitly discussed in my legal writing class, including when to use it and how to use it.
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What is an m-dash but an elevated ellipsis?
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The em-dash has been cool at least since Em-dash-ily Dickinson took it up.
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
the rest of the delicious em-dashes hidden here for brevity
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—
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as a longtime user of the english language
– i can conclusively say that it evolves over time and that if people diddnt accept changing grammar/usage/vocabulary, we would all still be saying “a norange” instead of “an orange” and decimate would still mean to destroy 10% of a thing.
people hate change, and i use parenthetical dashes all the time.
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I’m a big fan – fight me!
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Does anyone actually use an Em—dash online? Or even an En–dash for that matter. Because of the restricted character set available on keyboards, most of the time, the minus-sign has supplanted both of those- and the hyphen.
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That’s ok for most chats, like we are having here.
I still want it in print, and will make use of it if I find it appropriate. And online, I want it being used for basically everything which isn’t a chat.
Dashes are dashing.
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Oh yea, emdashes are a huge Mac user shibboleth, because it’s easy to pop one out. Windows you basically have to have muscle-memorized an elaborate alt code.
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I didn’t take the time to make an actual dash, but I used to write on form posts with dashes a lot. It probably go into a bad habit and if I did any formal writing I had to undo the dashes.
I think, for the most part, I have gotten back to comma usage. Though I still use them for pauses and more “natural” speech patterns.
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Sometimes I like to use really big dashes.
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Just learn to type the different kinds of dashes properly, people.
Hyphen: For joining compound words and names. “British-Australian entertainer Olivia Newton-John is seventy-three years old.”
En Dash: For denoting a range of dates or values. “Open 9am–5pm, Mon–Fri”
Em Dash: For introducing a pause or aside. “I never—well, almost never—stalk the streets thirsting for human blood.”
Dine and Dash: For evading responsibility for a restaurant tab. “Which way is your restroom?”
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I spend years breaking students of their lazy use of ellipses… and then along comes the em dash—looking all cool and techy—and it brings back all of their bad habits! There is no use of the em dash not better served by a different mark. Commas are just fine for nonrestrictive phrases, like appositives or similar; when separating independent clauses, the true connoisseur uses a semi-colon.
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