In praise of em-dashes

[randy_byers]

My response to the recent screed against em-dashes is that I love em-dashes so much that half my love for silent movies is for the frequent use of double em-dashes in the intertitles:

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

MM-dashes!

The whole screed-y thing about using too many em-dashes is more properly a screed against people who use too many of them, and doesn't seem to me to touch on the humble horizontal marks at all.

The real thing to go after would be hillbilly emo poets who use ellipses in place of every other bit of punctuation. I think it's in an issue of Highway Evangelist that I found at a truck stop that someone wrote a pathetic poem (in more than one way) about some horribly mistreated child, who of course dies, and every dozen words would have at least two ellipses in them somewhere. The effect was of someone gasping out the words, perhaps racked by spasms of tears, or maybe barfing at the naked bathos of the verses.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

There's no such thing as too many em-dashes!

However, I'm with you on excess ellipses ...

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Ellipses... are misused to indicate... thoughtfulness....

But... the effect on me... is of someone nodding off... between thoughts...

Worse yet.. is when someone indicates the length of the pause......... with an apparently.. random number...... of dots...................

*splorfle*

Wait, what? I was awake!

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I find the use of an ellipsis to indicate a pause in speech overused.
I applaud the use of the ellipsis used correctly to indicate words removed from a quote or similar. Especially if an actual ellipsis character is used, rather than three periods. Editing and teaching have apparently turned me into quite the typography and punctuation pedant!