This article was first released on May 12, 2018, after I “discovered” em dashes. Since that time, I have used em dashes with relative abandon in fiction, nonfiction, and creative nonfiction writing. Until now.
With the best of the best literature having been fed to AI early on, it’s no wonder that our favorite words and punctuation have been commandeered.
But that doesn’t mean we should abandon our best words or proper punctuation to Artificial Intelligence. Period. End of story.
I don’t know about you, but I will give up my em dashes and words like delve and forge and elevate when they pry them from my cold dead hands.
As should you. Not to be shoulding on y’all or anything.
Why? For many reasons, the first of which is this—before AI was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I cut my teeth on the same tomes it was fed.
LET THAT SINK IN, DEAR WRITERS.
So, never, ever, ever relent to the pressures of the young, naive, and unwise. They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And if YOU are one of the ones crying wolf over em dashes and terms like “diving in,” “elevate,” and “transformation”, for God’s sake, STOP IT!
Here’s the original article from May 12, 2018 with a new picture and one or two tweaks.
I have been writing "professionally" for ten years—and am just now learning about em dashes. Those of you with creative writing degrees are probably laughing and saying, "Whaaaat?!?!"
But after sharing my discovery of Microsoft Word's em dash "key" on Twitter , other writers revealed that—like me they'd either been winging it—or had no clue.
Say you're one of those writers? Splendid!
How did we function without em dashes?
I used commas and periods. The commas are fine, being common writing practice. The periods? Well, let's just say they created a lot of trailing sentence fragments. With em dash—that extra long, hyphen-looking thingy—this no longer happens.
I must admit, though. I miss the choppy sentence style.
In addition to em dashes, there are en dashes, used to denote sequences and such. This morning I got to replace several commas with en dashes in a listing of the items in a captain's log. Yeehaa!
No. Really. Who knew proper punctuation could be so exhilarating?
So how DO we type em and en dashes? (Hehe save the blue ones for me.)
In MS Word, an em dash can be typed by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Minus. That's the MINUS key on the side numeric keyboard, NOT the hyphen key at the top of the main keyboard. An en dash is Alt+Minus.
BUT.
While Ctrl+Alt+Minus works like a charm in the MS Word program, it doesn't work in many other places. Like Blogger and Twitter to name two.
A Twitter writer friend relayed this in a comment:
For an em dash type Alt+0151
For an en dash type Alt+0150
You can also get an em dash by typing double hyphens OR going to the insert symbol menu. I'll leave you to your own on those.
For a discussion on the proper usage of em and en dashes—which is a subject unto itself—I found these links helpful:
Chicago Manual of Style-Em Dashes
Get It Write-Em Dashes
When To Use and Not Use an Em Dash
Em Dash: Why Should You Love It?
As a fledgling em and en-dasher, I'm sure it will take me a while to master these lovely punctuation marks—but I'm game. Hopefully, this discussion will help you, too.
Do you use em dashes? Did you already know what they are? What effect (if any) has the hubbub over AI had on your writing?
So, there you have it. Stop giving in to the AI thugs. Use your em dashes and all words freely. They belonged to us long before the advent of AI. They’re OURS, gosh dang it. (Why do I hear that in a Matthew McConaughey accent—it’s arrrsss?)
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From my heart to yours, Olivia/O.J.
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