by K. Louden

Created on: January 31, 2008

Master the Dash for a Conversational Style-and Then Get Internet Sites to Print It Right!

The dash has always been my favorite punctuation mark. It helps writers to organize lists, sentences within sentences (asides), and surprising afterthoughts, all without the stiff formality of the colon. It creates its own flowing sentence structure and allows for a mass of editorial content or personal commentary that reveals the writer's own gut feelings-yuck! Plus, it allows him to really "talk" on a personal level to the reader-you see? Also, it enlivens the writer's personality, because it partners so well with the exclamation mark-earning the writer an "A" for "expression"!

Okay, now that we're off to a good start, getting to know one another a little, I can reveal some petty, peevish gripe of mine and rest assured that you won't judge me too harshly. After all, I'm not like Jerry Seinfeld, finding trivial or imagined fault everywhere. But, after uploading writing to several internet sites, I am sooo aggravated that my dashes are either printed wrong or left out!

I had to take copies of Time magazine to class to prove to students, "See, the dash is, too, typed as two hyphens (-) and with no space before and after." And then I had to assure them that Time is famous for the most correct punctuation in the world. So why don't internet sites print the dash with two hyphens or 2 spaces wide-to save every bit of storage space? Checking out Time's site, I see that they print double-wide dashes and leave a space before and after. Okay, that's good, because the material separated by the dash needs to stand out from the rest of the sentence. Their dashes occupy 4 spaces.

The worst possible way to print a dash is as one hyphen without spaces. Now that I'm really sounding a bit like Andy Rooney, I might as well explain in more detail. When a reader scans a sentence with an introductory or internal list of items separated by dashes, he may skip the list. Here's an example: "Every item in my suitcase-underwear, clothing, food snacks, books, toiletries, medicine, clock radio, hair rollers, stationery, and more-was searched thoroughly by security." As a reader, I may not want to get to know a writer that well, to note every single item in his/her suitcase, and if the list inside the dashes stands out with sufficient space from the rest of the sentence, then I don't have to note the individual items. I may even reread the sentence later to get the gist of it, and again, I don't need to notice the specific items in the list for that purpose. As a writer, I want my meaning and organization to be clear to readers, and spacing and the length of the dashes is imperative.

All the rules we learned in school-they don't need to change to accommodate the internet. The effect is a hopeless feeling of anarchy that the medium engenders in its users. Oh, just so you know, I typed every dash in this piece the way I was taught to do it-2 hyphens with no space before or after. We'll see how the spacing displays. I still believe that what's been considered correct mechanics for who knows how many centuries doesn't need to change. It "ain't broken"-that's our government!

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