Em Dashes Are Amazing!
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| This is an en dash (duh) |
College application season was a few months ago, and I can count the number of times I used an em dash in my essays on one hand. (I can count it on zero hands.) I don’t think I ever learned how em dashes work—they’re a handy tool, but far too underrated and underused. So I decided to sit down and properly learn how to use em dashes, along with en dashes and hyphens. Commas, colons, and semicolons get boring after a while; they don’t provide you with enough variety and flavor in your texts. If your punctuation is limited, then every time you write, you treat everything as a nail. Em dashes are like adding a screwdriver to your collection of tools (a hammer), but the screwdriver can shapeshift into a can opener, a pocket knife, and a toothbrush.
I think that many people have come to associate an excessive usage of em dashes with LLM-generated text. After all, em dashes are frequently used in human-generated text by people who understand how to use them—text which is then used as training data for models like GPT-4. Most people don’t even know how to type em dashes on a standard keyboard (Alt + 0151 on Windows and Option + Shift + - on Mac). But I don’t care. Em dashes are a marvelous piece of punctuation that cannot be taken away from me. And I thought it’d be fun to share with you the many uses of em dashes, as well as the relatively few en dashes and hyphens. So, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.1
Escalation
Of course, we must start with the boring punctuation—the hyphen. Hyphens are the shortest of the three dashes, and they’re so simple that even middle-schoolers, middle-aged fellows, and your father-in-law can understand their ultra-simplistic usage. They are used to combine compound words and they’re used in compound modifiers. Well-known compound modifiers include “high-”, “low-”, and “all-”;. They are also used when writing out numbers such as thirty-four or fifty-one, and fractions such as one-seventeenth or two thirty-fourths (you can figure out the rule from these two examples; two-thirty-fourths is weird to read). So if you’re sitting in your high-rise while nursing a low-grade fever, this paragraph isn’t an all-encompassing guide to using the hyphen, but it’ll get you close enough. I think writing helps a lot with learning how to use hyphens—you’ll get a feel for when it’s appropriate to use hyphens and when it’s not.
The en dash is admittedly less interesting than the hyphen, but it still has its semi-respectable uses (not there though ahahaha). It gets its name from being the length of the letter “N”. Its primary usage is in ranges, such as 6am–6pm, 2008–2026, and scores such as the Seahawks beating the Patriots 29–13. It’s used in compound words in place of hyphens when one of the words is multiple words. So whether you’re writing about the post–New Deal era or the Nobel Prize–winning scientist, an en dash would be appropriate. It’s also used when showing linkages such as a Vancouver–Osaka flight or the liberal–conservative debate. So overall, the en dash is just an ordinary but niche punctuation mark. It has its uses but—let’s be honest—it doesn’t even come close to the functionality of the em dash (it couldn’t even wriggle its dim-witted way into that sentence or this one ahahaha).
Pinnacle
The em dash is one of the best punctuation marks in the English language—its range of uses is just so vast. It can take the place of other punctuation—parentheses, commas, semicolons, colons—these are just a few of the punctuation marks the em dash can replace. It gets its name the same way the en dash gets its name—from the width of the letter “M”. I could list the ways to use an em dash—too many ways—but we’d be here all day.
Em dashes are used when quoting people—below is an example:
"좀 놀랄 거야 / 내 방식대로 놀아볼 거야 / 다른 너로 내가"
—本田仁美, "D-D-Dance"
When you’re writing dialogue, you can use an em dash to indicate an interru—
The em dash is an amazing tool that will enrich your English, that is—if you can use it properly. And the proper way to use it is based on vibes—who cares if you don’t follow the playbook word-for-word?—for the English language would be duller without it.
On a realistic note—for most practical purposes, perfect grammar isn’t required. My blog posts contain many impurities2 and imperfections in the writing, but who cares? As long as you’re not writing something serious like a college paper, take the creative freedom to do what you want with your writing! No one’s going to care if you use a hyphen where an en dash is supposed to be used. If you can communicate your message across effectively, that’s all that matters.
Life Update!
How was the AIME? I don’t know; I didn’t take it. I had a dentist appointment and got some medical forms filled out for a study abroad program application. I don’t think I missed out on much as a senior though. The increase in cheating (150 DHR? Are we serious?) sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about it, except try to enjoy the exams rather than solely focusing on performing well.
I also had a low-grade fever this weekend! A constantly stuffy nose that randomly clears up every once in a while just sucks to deal with. When I slept, I woke up in the middle of the night and swallowing was just extremely painful. My symptoms were affecting me to the point where my energy was a lot lower than usual, but not to the point where I had to rest. It’s not fun to experience, but it could’ve been a lot worse.
No updates on college decisions—those come out later. One on February 15, one on March 14, and the rest in late March and early April. We’ll see what happens.
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