Killing Em-Dashes

I just spent the better part of my morning tracking down em-dashes in my work-in-progress, book 3 of my Cumberland Creek Mysteries. One of my beta readers pointed out that I use a lot of them, And I do.  

For those of you who are not sure what an em-dash is, it’s the long dash that writers use to break up unwieldy sentences, or for emphasis. Sometimes it’s to interrupt ourselves. Looking over my WIP, I think I’m guilty of all of that and more.

Years ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting writing coach Don Fry at the Greenbrier Symposium for Professional Food Writers. He sat next to me at dinner. Among many things we discussed, we talked about the em-dash. I’m not sure how he feels about it these days, but then he said the trend for writers to use it frequently was just laziness. “Don’t get into the habit,” he advised.

And wow. I should have listened. It’s become quite a lazy habit for me. When I reviewed this manuscript, I saw that I used it in place of commas, semi-colons, and even prepositions and conjunctions, way too much.

But let me say that I do love the em-dash and won't give it up completely. I can’t say why other writers use it. For me, the reasons are rhythmic in nature. Yes, rhythmic. By that I mean the way the sentence sounds to my ear. I don’t want a pause. I want a quick bridge with a louder, concise, emphasis.  I also want the reader to hear that as they are seeing those words. It’s a visual clue to the way I want it to sound in my reader’s heads.

But if a writer uses it too much, for whatever reason, the affect of it dwindles and probably irritates. I agree with Lynne Truss author of her best-seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves. She says that people use the em-dash because "they know you can't use it wrongly—which for a punctuation mark, is an uncommon virtue."

So I cut about ninety-five percent of my em-dashes and am vowing to be more careful about it in the future.

How about you? Do you use the em-dash? Readers, does, it bother you to see it used?

Confessions of a Grammar Geek

I'm a sucker for good grammar books. I mean, I love learning about the little quirks of our language. When a bookseller at the Virginia Festival of the Book suggested that I would like Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies, I promptly bought a copy. Furthermore, I couldn't wait to dig in!

Wouldn't you know, I learned something right away. I was taught that the abbreviated form of the word "until" is "'til." But it's not. It's "till." I thought that "till" was another word for cash register. Even stranger, it turns out that "until" is derived from "till" and not the other way around. Motivated Grammar offers a wonderful discourse on this.

And yes, if you look hard enough, you'll find titles like Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour.

One of my pet peeves is misuse of the objective and subjective case. Yet you hear and read it all the time. For example, this week's issue of People magazine quotes Emily Maynard as saying, "Well, he just saw Brad and I together, and he just started crying." She was explaining what happened after her dad met Brad Womack, the man who proposed to her on the Bachelor.

But it could have been because Emily misused the word "I." She should have said, "Well, he just saw Brad and me together, and he just started crying."

Frankly, I think the folks at People should have been generous enough to fix that little slip-up. Of course, there's an easy test for a problem like that--split up the sentence. I bet Emily would never say, "Well, he just saw I, and he just started crying." (I'll admit that running these tests in your head can turn your conversation into a series of halting stammers.)

I'm not perfect when it comes to grammar. Far from it. However, I hope to improve--and books like this can help a lot. (Not alot.)

Meanwhile, I'm happy to read that people often say "doggy-dog" for "dog-eat-dog" and "tow the line" for "toe the line." Where I grew up in Southern Indiana, I thought folks were saying, "It's a hard row to toe." Actually, they probably meant, "It's a hard row to hoe." But something got lost in the translation.

I definitely grew up hearing the term "widder woman," meaning a widow.

How about you? Are you a grammar geek, too?

Holding Up Your Pants with That, Which & Who

By Chris Roerden (copyright 2010)

Note: Chris is our special guest, leading off an entire week of "Nuts and Bolts." Part II of this piece will appear tomorrow. Stay tuned all week for a tune-up of your writing skills!

Suspenders might look old-fashioned, but at least they keep the wearer’s pants from falling down. Contrast that image with the caricature of a fellow sporting only one suspender. Terms that come to mind might include careless, unrefined.

Moving from haberdashery to typography, parentheses are like suspenders, meant to function in pairs. Certain dashes and certain commas also work in pairs. The latter are called, not surprisingly, parenthetical commas.

Words contained within a pair of commas (like the preceding “not surprisingly”) are not essential to the meaning of a sentence. They may enrich its meaning, but they could be omitted without changing it. Parenthetical content is also known as non-restrictive, because the meaning of the rest of the sentence is not restricted or controlled by either the absence or the presence of parenthetical content. It functions like a stage-whispered aside.

Example 1: Jeffery Deaver, internationally celebrated author, will teach a 90-minute class for writers on May 1, 2010, in High Point, NC, as part of an all-day skill-building workshop.

Notice how the comma-enclosed words after the author's name add information that could be omitted, especially for audiences who already recognize his name and enjoy his mysteries and thrillers. Notice that the year following the month and date could also be omitted, especially in a discussion of 2010 events. And the state abbreviation could be dropped, too, especially for readers who most likely recognize High Point as part of North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad.

Using parenthetical commas is the same as using actual parentheses--except at the end of a sentence. There, the closing parenthesis mark) remains intact, no matter what end punctuation is added, whereas the closing parenthetical comma is replaced by a period (or other end punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation point).

Parenthetical commas are an endangered species. I regularly encounter only half a pair, as in Example 2: Jeffery Deaver will teach a 90-minute class for writers on May 1, 2010 in High Point, NC as part of an all-day skill-building workshop co-sponsored by Sisters in Crime. Careful readers wince when encountering open-ended parenthetical phrases like the above, and I wonder what happened to the missing punctuation.

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Join us tomorrow when Chris will explain when to use "that, which and who."

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Chris Roerden, who doesn't pretend to be a grammarian, has nevertheless edited authors published by St. Martin's, Berkely Prime Crime, Midnight Ink, Viking, Rodale, Intrigue, and many others.

Her DON'T MURDER YOUR MYSTERY received the Agatha Award and was shortlisted for the Anthony and Macavity. DON'T SABOTAGE YOUR SUBMISSION, the all-genre version, received the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award™ for Literary Criticism, the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Book of the Year Award, and ForeWord Magazine's Bronze Medal for Writing Book of the Year.