The Art of the Em Dash and the Gradation of Sentence Breaks

Disambiguating periods, commas, semicolons, ellipses, parentheticals, and em dashes

Image created by author

I heard a useful analogy recently for thinking about the different types of breaks in a sentence. The writer related the comma, semicolon, and period to the quarter note, half note, and whole note of music.

In the world of music, each note listed above is twice the duration of the one that precedes it: quarter, half, and whole.

The …