Tuesday, July 27, 2010

SQUIDS 101: Punctuation: Emdashes

Before I go on to the Squid 101 here, a word of thanks to the kind people who submitted entries in the flap-copy contest; it was very interesting and useful to see what you writers judged attractive for other writers (apparently having someone say what NOT to do is as useful as what TO do, as half of you mentioned the "what not to do" thing).

And I have FINISHED THE BOOK TEXT, pending an approvals question. I've discovered that the great danger of self-publishing, at least for me, is that there's been nobody and no deadline to take the manuscript out of my endlessly questioning, pushing, correcting hands. So it feels good to finally declare, "Enough, I'm done" and move on. I'm really pleased with a lot of the new material, and I hope you will be too.

Anyway: emdashes.



The emdash has all the functions of the comma, semicolon, AND colon: It can be used to create pauses, introduce a list, or join two independent or dependent clauses. It is regarded as less formal than all of those marks, however, and they are all preferable in more formal writing. In narrative writing, I think of it as simultaneously more dramatic and more invisible than those marks; it is long enough to create a real pause, but because there generally aren’t any spaces around it, it also creates a continuous flow of text. It can thus be used for scenes where you want a flow of clauses unbroken by real stops, especially in stream-of-consciousness writing or action scenes:
The squid reached out—the oxygen tank dangling from the tip of its tentacle—I stretched the whole length of my body towards it—but then the shark jerked on my foot and pulled me away.
Compare that to:
The squid reached out, the oxygen tank dangling from the tip of its tentacle; I stretched the whole length of my body towards it, but then the shark jerked on my foot and pulled me away.
This second example is probably more correct, but because it allows the reader to slow down, it’s rather less dramatic. On the other hand, the first example is probably too dramatic, so it would be wise to strive for a nice balance between the two:
The squid reached out, the oxygen tank dangling from the tip of its tentacle. I stretched the whole length of my body towards it—but then the shark jerked on my foot and pulled me away.
What's nice about this one is that the emdash creates a brief little pause at the moment of highest suspense, like being at the top of a hill on a roller coaster: Will our narrator get the oxygen tank in time? And then the dash's length drags that moment out until the shark answers the question for us. A semicolon would have been incorrect there, and a comma or colon wouldn't have had the same sense of suspension, I don't think. I love dashes for just this drama and flexibility, though if you share my addiction to them, we need to remember that like all highly dramatic marks, they should be used sparingly.

The emdash is also used to set off interruptions, either within a sentence or at the end of it. (Parentheses could be used in this next example just as easily, but because they create a little commentary world unto themselves, closed off from the rest of the sentence, they seem like a bigger pause than emdashes to me.)
The dead squid—the only trustworthy kind, as far as Joan was concerned—lay limply on the dock.

I assure you, Officer, I have never eaten—HEY! Did you get a look at that squid?
My authors know that if Character X is speaking and Character Y interrupts him, I will almost always request that they end Character X’s speech with an emdash to signify X’s getting cut off abruptly.
Looking deeply into Selina’s larger left eye, Phil took her front tentacle in his and murmured, “My most beautiful Miss Bonnellii, will you do me the honor of becoming—”
“I WON!” screeched Ethel from across the restaurant.
Note: In typesetting, there are actually three kinds of dash marks:
  • hyphens, like so: - , which join two words into one closed compound
  • endashes, which were created in hand-typesetting using two hyphens (the length of an “n”), and which are used to join open compounds (like “the North Dakota–Minnesota border”; “North Dakota” is an open compound because it’s one word with a space in it) or to replace the word “to” (as in “1996–2000,” or “our California–Florida trip”)
  • and emdashes, which equal three hyphens (the length of an “m”), and are discussed above.
Writers are generally not expected to know about endashes. If you use hyphens and emdashes correctly, that’s good enough for most editors, and we’ll trust the endashes will be taken care of in copyediting.

13 comments:

  1. I'll admit to not knowing all about this one, so thank you for enlightening me! Now I know I've actually been using it properly . . . for the most part. :)

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  2. Looking deeply into Selina’s larger left eye, Phil took her front tentacle in his and murmured, “My most beautiful Miss Bonnellii, will you do me the honor of becoming—”
    “I WON!” screeched Ethel from across the restaurant.
    ==============================

    Thanks for this example. I had a similar situation arise and was wondering if you should end the dialog with a period after the em dash...I see now that you should not.

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  3. hmmm....in your first example of multiple emdashes, it feels very choppy and broken-up to me (not a continuous flow of anything). I confess to an unnatural and overriding love of the semi-colon, which negatively impacts my feelings about the emdash.

    still, this is a pretty great little guide. have you perhaps considered writing a very brief style guide, say for your average undergrad, using squid-based examples to explain punctuation?

    [also: why such squiddity? were you reading Mieville's KRAKEN? i guess i need to go review your archive to source the squids...but ever since I read Kraken two weeks ago, squids have been turning up EVERYWHERE. it's disconcerting]

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  4. AHA! i have reviewed your SQUIDS 101 series and now it all makes sense.

    In all seriousness, would you mind if I provided your website details to my undergrads as a good quick source for some basic punctuation/editing info? they'd much rather look online than crack open a book, AND your Harry Potter connection should provoke their interest (and thus lure them into a life in the grammatical underworld!)

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  5. Ah, the glorious emdash. I am also guilty of overusing it, but I just love how it looks.

    Thanks for these entries. I'm an editor as well, and over the years I have realized that I have a passion for punctuation.

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  6. Thanks for your explanation of the infamous em dash.

    I'm a technical writer by trade, and it is interesting to see how differently the em dash is used in my field. In my experience, the em dash is used in place of a colon, especially in sub-lists where a colon was already used. It is used more as a way to separating items then causing a pause.

    It is also used many times in place of a colon to create white space around a definition.

    Thanks again for your explanation, I'm looking forward to more.

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  7. Great post. The mystery of em-dashes explained and the secret of en-dashes exposed. I was always clear on em-dashes to express interrupted speech, but was hazy on replacing commas, colons & semi-colons.

    I still find myself using a colon on the rare occasion my narrative has a list. Maybe I'll switch to em-dashes.

    I've also read that semi-colons have fallen very much out of favor. Is there truth to that rumor?

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  8. I appreciate your explanation and examples of the emdash. They were very helpful.

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  9. Здравейте! топъл поздрав.
    Блогът ви изглежда добре.

    Надявам се получат успеха през цялото време.

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  10. But can't we hear the whole Selina and Ethel story, please?

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  11. I think the main issue that I have with the use of your em-dashes in the first example is that the action gets too confusing--what is happening in between all those em-dashes? Or perhaps, I'm just not dramatic in that way.

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  12. Your grammar lessons are most helpful. Thank You.

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  13. Thank you for introducing me the wonderful information.And .....Totally boring.!

    ReplyDelete