The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
slate.com
slate.com
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.
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.
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...
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.
I don't use em dashes profusely. However, I'm reminded of bumping into arbitrary rules that mandated rewriting something into a more awkward form in order to comply with the rules.
There is a certain subset of instructors who confuse students with rules more than they aid them in learning to communicate clearly.
As for the style guides. Well, I don't know how things are these days, but there was also a not insignificant portion of pedagogy devoted to blind adherence to one or another. All the more confusing when a young student is not really working in a context that allows the student to see where, how, and why the rules make sense. Cart before the horse, I guess I might say.
Meanwhile, hammers still useful.
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.
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.