The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
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Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#2There's two points being made here and they're not all that clearly distinguished. First, excursions, where a new thought is interpolated into a sentence before the previous one is complete, can be tiring.
Second, people use em dashes where other punctuation would be more appropriate—the article illustrates this nicely, where lots of em dashes are used that would better be commas or semicolons. Em dashes are the most emphatic punctuation for communicating excursions, so the two points are related.
Indeed, em dashes should be used sparingly, as exclamation marks are, since they are visually distracting. Chicago suggests that no paragraph should contain more than two em dashes, and most should not contain that many. By my reckoning, Noreen Malone packed 14 em dashes into each of two paragraphs in her article.
But the fairly mechanical task of turning dashes into other punctuation doesn't tackle the point about excessively excursive writing. And here I don't agree that they are the enemy of "truly efficient writing". Excursions can be a sign of mental disorganisation in the writer, one who isn't writing with clear purpose, but they can also be the sign of a successful reworking of complex material, to present it in the most digestible manner. I don't think that "excursions bad" is useful advice, rather I suggest "check that excursions are of clear value".
I have three excursions in this comment, and I think all pass this "clear value" test; as an exercise, you can check if you agree with me. There's an em dash too.
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#3The author likens it with a pack of cigarette a day. It would be more apt if she compared it with wine, where a glass a day has proven to be beneficial.
She quoted it herself: "Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate."
Who are we, we modern writers, to pass judgment—and with such shocking frequency—on these more simple forms of punctuation—the workmanlike comma, the stalwart colon, the taken-for-granted period? (One colleague—arguing strenuously that certain occasions call for the dash instead of other punctuation, for purposes of tone—told me he thinks of the parenthesis as a whisper, and the dash as a way of calling attention to a phrase.
Right, so because you as a modern writer don't want to pass judgment we should stop using it? I'm on her colleague's side on this one.
EDIT: Embarassing gender confusion. Thanks for the correction.
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#4I think this article was hilarious in how it demonstrated the problems with the em dash. Honestly, I couldn't even finish it because the style was so frustrating...
But I still like it, and I know the author does too. The em dash is an artistic tool which gives a bit of humanity to the author. It makes it feel a little less calculated and a little more free-form. I respect professionalism, but even professionals like to let loose with their heart from time to time, to reveal their stream of consciousness, and the em dash is a tool in that regard. The real message here isn't that the em dash is evil, just that we should avoid over-using it.
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#5The author likens it with a pack of cigarette a day. It would be more apt if she compared it with wine, where a glass a day has proven to be beneficial. She quoted it herself: "Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate." Who are we, we modern writers, to pass judgment—and with such shocking frequency—on these more simple forms of punctuation—the workmanlike comma, the stalwart colon, the…
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Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#6This article is unreadable. And that may be the point.
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#7The article makes some good points that are obscured by the ridiculous conceit of overusing the em dash. This is like arguing that since running 100 miles in a day will hurt your feet, running is a bad idea.
Even the title is a misuse of the em dash. An excursion to plead for patience on the part of the reader should only come when the beginning of the sentence is likely to irritate people. The words "The Case" aren't going to annoy readers, so pleading for people to please hear the author out is annoying. THAT is the problem with the title. Not the presence of an excursion or parenthetical remark, but the presence of an annoying and meaningless excursion manufactured to make the author seem witty. And so it is with the rest of the post, the excursions are all so blatantly manufactured and artificial, it is impossible to hold them up as examples of why the em dash is a bad idea.
To me, the article demonstrates why conceits are a bad idea. Trying to be too clever obscures your message rather than reinforces it.
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#8The article makes a case against hammers by showing how ugly it is to see one bashing a skull.
Meanwhile, hammers still useful.
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#9The article makes some good points that are obscured by the ridiculous conceit of overusing the em dash. This is like arguing that since running 100 miles in a day will hurt your feet, running is a bad idea. Even the title is a misuse of the em dash. An excursion to plead for patience on the part of the reader should only come when the beginning of the sentence is likely to irritate people. The words "The Case" aren'…
I couldn't bring myself to read it. I think you summarize my instinctive/intuitive/gut-level reaction. (Literally gut level, which is why I stopped.)
This reminds me so much of what I hate about much of the pedagogy of "writing". Formulaic writing is just that, formulaic. It may work well in the artifice of a classroom; not so much in the real world.
Strictures can be useful, e.g. in technical documentation. But even there, it takes some creativity to communicate clearly and effectively. "No more than two em dashes per paragraph" simply doesn't cut it.
Oh, and to the author of the Slate article: Allow me to introduce you to the en dash –. Buwahaha...
Re: The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
#10The article makes some good points that are obscured by the ridiculous conceit of overusing the em dash. This is like arguing that since running 100 miles in a day will hurt your feet, running is a bad idea. Even the title is a misuse of the em dash. An excursion to plead for patience on the part of the reader should only come when the beginning of the sentence is likely to irritate people. The words "The Case" aren'…
I couldn't bring myself to read it. I think you summarize my instinctive/intuitive/gut-level reaction. (Literally gut level, which is why I stopped.) This reminds me so much of what I hate about much of the pedagogy of "writing". Formulaic writing is just that, formulaic. It may work well in the artifice of a classroom; not so much in the real world. Strictures can be useful, e.g. in technical documentation. But even…
"gut-level" - Let's say this is the stylistic equivalent of a fart joke. I think it worked well enough
Rather firm limits on the density of em dashes are fair, because there's a typographical issue of avoiding "horizontal rivers": the distracting effect of dashes varies nonlinearly with their number. An upper limit of two, per Chicago, or three, is a good usage stricture; there is practically never a strong reason to violate it.
"en dash" - Fair enough, but she's following AP style, which uses em dashes.