The Art of the Em Dash and the Gradation of Sentence Breaks
Disambiguating periods, commas, semicolons, ellipses, parentheticals, and em dashes
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. (For anyone with a bit of musical background, it may also useful to think of these pauses as the rests between notes, rather than the notes themselves.)
The comma is the quarter note, indicating only a very short pause in the sentence structure. These are likely the most versatile bits of punctuation, serving roles in lists, addresses, dates, and occurring in almost every other sentence.
The semicolon is the half note, denoting a break that’s both larger than the comma and shorter than the period. With a niche few exceptions, the clauses separated by semicolons should each function as individual sentences. The two ideas should be so directly related that the second follows immediately from the first.
Periods are whole notes. They come with the largest pauses and represent the greatest shifts in an idea. Sometimes they represent the end of ideas completely.
But just as in music, we’ve got dotted quarters, dotted halves, and dotted whole notes, as well as a whole plethora of ways of articulating each — such as staccato, legato, and marcato — there are types of pauses in English that land on the spectrum somewhere in between commas, semicolons, and periods. Language isn’t that binary. There are nooks and crannies of expression that call for breaks in sentences that are neither quarter, half, nor whole.
Parenthetical clauses, for example, come with pauses comparable to commas. It’s often a mere stylistic choice whether or not to house an added bit of information embedded within parentheses or commas. In many cases, there are no concrete rules about which is more correct and their proper use simply becomes a matter of subjective interpretation.
To my eye, the parenthetical often carries more levity and personality. It’s also more casual and personal. But when overused, it can sacrifice a certain professionalism.
A sentence could read either: “Mark, who never misses a chance to show off, jumped at the opportunity to answer the professor’s question,” or “Mark (who never misses a chance to show off) jumped at the opportunity to answer the professor’s question.”
Both communicate the same message with the same number of words with the same relative pauses, but there’s a friendly sort of candor that the second route carries that feels left out from the first. Often, my use of parentheses will be reserved for adding essential bits of information, or in memoirs at places where I most hope to convey my character and voice.
Journalist Janice Harayda spoke recently of an old mentor who taught her to “never cut anything you put in parentheses.” It’s often in these phrases where who we are as a person shines through the very most.
But likely no device has grown to be a greater darling to my writing in these past few years than the em dash ( — ). Em dashes, wholly distinct in function from both dashes and en dashes, fit into a niche of their own in the world of sentence breaks.
While there are sentences that would operate fine with a pair of parentheses, commas, or em dashes separating the clause from the rest of the sentence, each line, curve, and squiggle has its separate and specific calls to action.
Functionally in my own writing, the em dash serves a role that’s a bit more professional than the parenthetical, and a bit more approachable than a simple pair of commas. Visually, the em dashes allow clauses to stand as something more separate than they would embedded within commas. It creates a pause that’s somewhere shy of the semicolon, but is still something more than the comma alone. Returning to the music analogy, it’s the dotted quarter note of writing (one and a half quarter notes.)
If the clause is simple, like the mere inclusion of a name or a few words worth of detail, I’ll typically encase the information in between commas. But if it’s much greater than that, the em dash feels like the appropriate break to use. For example, in a recent film article on the movie Swiss Army Man, I wrote the following sentence:
Helmed by the award-winning pair of directors that brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022 — as well as the delightfully raucous music video for the DJ Snake and Lil Jon song “Turn Down for What” — their 2016 directorial debut parades the same hallmark weirdness on full display within both.
Here, the clause housed in between the two dashes is a bit more of a verbal tangent from the main idea than I would attempt to tuck between two commas. It allows me to get across a sentence with more information without it feeling too overbearingly convoluted.
Em dashes can also subvert the use of colons. In places where one might place a colon and then begin listing names, the em dash offers a less jarring break in the sentence.
One could say that: “She has many interests: painting, writing, and cycling,” or “She has many interests — painting, writing, and cycling.” Again, both communicate the same information in the same number of words, but offer a slightly different air to the sentence. There’s a simplicity to the idea that doesn’t feel as though it calls for the officious colon. In a more serious matter by contrast, though, the sentence might be better suited by the colon use.
Ellipses can also be used to create a sense of pause. While sometimes used to offer an open-endedness or imply words unspoken, they typically fill a void that’s something more than a half note, yet still somewhere shy of a whole note. Sometimes, ellipses seem to extend beyond even the period in their scope. In the sentence “I don’t know… maybe we should just call it a day,” there’s an implicit sigh that marks arguably more of a break than the period itself.
The sheer number of ways that writers have of getting each of their ideas across is enough to boggle the mind. But when we consider the added weights that each little bit of punctuation carries, the array of avenues available begins to appear all the more infinite.
This article was originally published on Medium.
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Love love this
punctuation bliss.