Ask the punctuation doctor
Image: Steven Depolo via Flickr (licence)
For some of us, our knowledge and use of the armoury of horizontal punctuation marks available to the literate English speaker stops at the stumpy little hyphen. But beyond that short horizon lies the land of the dash – the em and the en.
The modern computer keyboard is an agent in the conspiracy to eliminate the dash from common usage, as it is no straightforward matter to locate them, requiring as it does the depression of 2 (sometimes 3) keys simultaneously. But maybe that’s no bad thing – at least it considerably attenuates their misuse.
We’ve discussed correct use of the dash previously, but this time I want to consider the dash as a symptom rather than a remedy.
While the correct use of en or em dashes can bring clarity to a sentence that contains a number of complicated, interconnected ideas, in a lot of cases it can be better to break such a long sentence down into shorter ones. As an exercise, this is worth trying. It can help you pare an idea down to its essentials and force the subsidiary material to justify its presence. Maybe you don’t need those parenthetical statements after all?
Start by identifying the main verb, subject and object of the sentence. Then examine the phrases or clauses in between the dashes and see if they can be turned into short sentences of their own. Or even eliminated altogether. Writing that takes things step by step is a big help to the reader. It’s always a better strategy than trying to get it all said at once – with all the exceptions and finer qualifications jammed in together.
