she had fallen “into headlong love with the em dash. I love the way it can create the feeling of a
fractured/incomplete/interrupted line or thought.”
Gretchen McCulloch, the author of Because Internet, about how the web is changing our language, describes
the em dash’s tone as “faux casual”, since it takes some know-how to implement in digital conversation.
There isn’t an em dash button on a standard keyboard, she says, so “you have to go to extra effort”. That
may mean shortcuts, or worse: copying and pasting em dashes from previously published work.
Many overuse the dash, which can weaken its effect and turn a paragraph into something resembling Morse
code
Those who don’t know better might use two successive hyphens to indicate an em-dash-like interruption.
In her book Type Rules!, Ilene Strizver describes this as a “typographically incorrect and downright ugly
practice”.
Emmy Jo Favilla, a brand voice manager at BuzzFeed, has publicly declared her love of the dash digitally
(her Twitter handle is @em_dash3) and physically (a tattoo of the proofreader’s mark for the em dash sits
behind her ear).
“There are few things more beautiful than a strategically placed em dash,” says Favilla, who was previously
BuzzFeed’s copy chief. “But many overuse the dash, which can weaken its effect and turn a paragraph into
something resembling Morse code.”
Diehards won’t hear it. “If anyone comes for an em dash and tries to say that it’s used too much, I’m willing
to defend it with my life,” Holliday Smith says.
I didn’t realise my love for the em dash was personal until I was looking at a dating profile recently. Under
things he’s “a fan of”, my potential match had listed “deleting em dashes” between “diner booths” and
“kink”.
Reader—I swiped left.
© New York Times