”You see,” Mabel averred, “even a moderately keen observer can ascertain-namely from its shape-a baked cake’s oven orientation.” Although they did miss the mark somewhat with the pineapple upside-down cake Mabel ordered-that is, the cake had clearly been baked right-side up. An em dash or pair of dashes often sets off illustrative or amplifying material introduced by such phrases as for example, namely, and that is, when the break in continuity is greater than that shown by a comma, or when the dash would clarify the sentence structure better than a comma.It was revelatory-it was a cheese Danish nonpareil. Nor would Harry forget his first bite of the Danish she delivered to him. Harry would never forget the Tuesday that Mabel called him from the bakery, her voice brimming with excitement-the bakery had added cheese Danishes to its selection. An em dash is often used in place of a colon or semicolon to link clauses, especially when the clause that follows the dash explains, summarizes, or expands upon the preceding clause in a somewhat dramatic way.The pies changed-apple year-round, for example, but pumpkin in fall and winter, strawberry rhubarb in spring, and peach in summer-as the bakery’s devotion to fresh ingredients dictated.Īnd Harry was extremely pleased to see the selection of available cakes-both chocolate and yellow butter cake carrot cake pound cake lemon chiffon and flourless chocolate cake. Dashes set off or introduce defining phrases and lists.Ī regular selection of three kinds of croissants-plain, almond, and chocolate-was heartening, both Mabel and Harry agreed. to 6 p.m.-certainly showed concern for customers’ manifold circumstances. The butteriness of the pastries did say something about an appropriate level of commitment to decadence-at least there was that.Īnd the wide range of its hours of operation-6 a.m. In this particular task, em dashes occupy a kind of middle ground among the three: when commas do the job, the material is most closely related to what’s around it, and when parentheses do the job, the material is most distantly related to what’s around it when dashes do the job the material is somewhere in the middle. Em dashes are used in place of commas or parentheses to emphasize or draw attention to parenthetical or amplifying material.“That is-I suppose it is concerning.” The Em Dash in Action: Attention Must Be Paid “Of course you have a point,” Mabel murmured. “That the bakers fail to recognize the crucial importance of the cheese Danish-” An em dash can indicate interrupted speech or a speaker’s confusion or hesitation.Mabel the Cat was delighted with the assortment of pastries the new bakery featured, but Harry the Dog-he felt otherwise. An em dash can mark an abrupt change or break in the structure of a sentence. How to type one, however, depends on your machine. This website prefers the latter, its style requiring the closely held em dash in running text. Most newspapers insert a space before and after the dash, and many popular magazines do the same, but most books and journals omit spacing, closing whatever comes before and after the em dash right up next to it. The em dash is sometimes considered a less formal equivalent of the colon and parenthesis, but in truth it’s used in all kinds of writing, including the most formal-the choice of which mark to use is really a matter of personal preference. Like a colon, an em dash introduces a clause that explains or expands upon something that precedes it. Like commas and parentheses, em dashes set off extra information, such as examples, explanatory or descriptive phrases, or supplemental facts. The em dash can function like a comma, a colon, or parenthesis. It looks like - or sometimes (as when one’s word processing program fails to convert it) - and it’s called the “common dash,” or “em dash.” The two names are well-earned this dash is the most common true dash, and it’s the approximate width of a capital M. There are various punctuation items that can be described as dashes, and we will get to them all, but we’ll begin with the most useful, and most used. They take the reader aside, and then draw that reader to the next bit like a good dance partner in the lead. Among punctuation marks, dashes have a certain panache.
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