I Love Me A Good Em Dash—An Em Dash Writing Snark-fest

Em dashes are awesome. Okay? Okay.

Em dashes—I’m obsessed, damn it.

There may be three different types of dashes, but only one stands out as the most fun. The first, an en dash—basically a simple hyphen—is good for number ranges or perhaps to connect fun words that you usually wouldn’t smash together. It doesn't feel as fun to use this low-grade version of its well-known, longer sibling. No doubt, it's still extremely useful, however—this article will stand as evidence. But, boring.

The double hyphen is rarely found these days—evolution, especially in grammar, is not for the faint of heart and this guy basically went the way of the dodo bird.

But—and I purposefully left this for last because that's where the best goes, right—the em dash holds a special place in my heart. Using an em dash is a great way—some might say the best one—to express a unique insight in an ultra-expressive way.

Additionally—and I don’t say this to de-emphasize or short-change the others—the em dash is simply more fun to type. It’s like taking a breath mid-sentence and providing context in an old-fashioned, almost know-it-all way. Sure, you could use a comma in many of these places, but that can feel like taking the easy way out.

In fact, em dashes can function like a comma, colon, or even a parenthesis. One might say it’s a three-dimensional threat—I certainly do.

Being an occupant of Gen-X, I’ve also been prone to using an ellipsis to convey the breath you might take when translating thoughts into text…but, not as often. Usually, this is best left to exist within the dialogue in my manuscripts—it’s a great way to express the natural pauses in speech patterns.

Where problems occur is that em dashes are frequently hailed as the hallmark of AI writing these days. Recently, allegations have circled the famed interwebs that an extremely well-known piece of punctuation is a tell-tale sign AI wrote it—I wholeheartedly disagree. That AI leans on it—well, humans did it first, suckers. It was trained on us, right?

Listen, I’m not an English major—I wouldn’t even say that I excel at writing in the language…yet. But, I try. As the mental movies play cinematically in my head and I write them down to share, I’ll continue to use whatever punctuation I feel is best for the conversational feel I want my novels to have. AI has a place in this world—I’ve certainly been known to request an analytical assessment a time or two—but I assure you, the words are all mine.

For now—deal with it—I’ll em-dash as I please. Got it?