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culturebox The Case--Please Hear Me Out--Against the Em Dash Modern prose doesn't need any more interruptions--seriously. By Noreen Malone Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2011, at 4:32 PM ET 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. The guide does not explicitly say that writers can use the dash in lieu of properly crafting sentences, or instead of a comma or a parenthetical or a colon--and yet in practical usage, we do. A lot--or so I have observed lately. America's finest prose--in blogs, magazines, newspapers, or novels--is littered with so many dashes among the dots it's as if the language is signaling distress in Morse code. What's the matter with an em dash or two, you ask?--or so I like to imagine. What's not to like about a sentence that explores in full all the punctuational options--sometimes a dash, sometimes an ellipsis, sometimes a nice semicolon at just the right moment--in order to seem more complex and syntactically interesting, to reach its full potential? Doesn't a dash--if done right--let the writer maintain an elegant, sinewy flow to her sentences? To continue reading, click here.* Noreen Malone is a Slate contributor. Follow her on Twitter. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE \| READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Judge Rules That Jared Lee Loughner Is Mentally Unfit To Stand Trial Robert Gates Begs Americans To Have an Honest Debate About Defense Spending The U.S. Should Support Israel's Security Needs but Not Its Moral Claims to West Bank Land	Advertisement
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Now playing: *Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V* at www.slatev.com.
culturebox The Case--Please Hear Me Out--Against the Em Dash Modern prose doesn't need any more interruptions--seriously. By Noreen Malone Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2011, at 4:32 PM ET 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. The guide does not explicitly say that writers can use the dash in lieu of properly crafting sentences, or instead of a comma or a parenthetical or a colon--and yet in practical usage, we do. A lot--or so I have observed lately. America's finest prose--in blogs, magazines, newspapers, or novels--is littered with so many dashes among the dots it's as if the language is signaling distress in Morse code. What's the matter with an em dash or two, you ask?--or so I like to imagine. What's not to like about a sentence that explores in full all the punctuational options--sometimes a dash, sometimes an ellipsis, sometimes a nice semicolon at just the right moment--in order to seem more complex and syntactically interesting, to reach its full potential? Doesn't a dash--if done right--let the writer maintain an elegant, sinewy flow to her sentences? To continue reading, click here.* Noreen Malone is a Slate contributor. Follow her on Twitter. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE \| READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Judge Rules That Jared Lee Loughner Is Mentally Unfit To Stand Trial Robert Gates Begs Americans To Have an Honest Debate About Defense Spending The U.S. Should Support Israel's Security Needs but Not Its Moral Claims to West Bank Land	Advertisement
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Culturebox: The Case--Please Hear Me Out--Against the Em Dash