Em-dashtardly
2009 July 4
The Chicago Manual of Style
(“The influence of three impressionists–Monet, Sisley, and Degas–is obvious in her work.”)
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
(“The costs — taxes and lawyers’ fees — were higher than expected.”)
The Strunk and White
(“His first thought on getting out of bed–if he had any thought at all–was to get back in bed again.”)
This is why people don’t bother learning English. If we can’t get it straight, why should they?
Love that Strunk and White example! Since I’m reading Alphabet Juice, I wanted to see if Roy Blount Jr. had anything to say. Skimpy on the dash:
“I don’t like a dash that seems to be saying ‘ta-daaa’ or ‘get a load of this.’ ”
He says often a comma or nothing would be fine. (I’ll have to think about this. I love dashes – and if you follow me on Twitter you can see that – so I’m feeling a bit unappreciated on the “ta-daaa” front. Of course, his book is losing some points from me – and I love the book – because there’s no index.)
His entry on “e-mail” is great, though. And sometimes you have to go with your ear, which in this case, is an eye. My ear says that a dash in a word, like e-mail, or e-book, should have no space. The eye very much wants to see a space when a dash is used between words, for whatever show-offy purpose you want!
And generally, as hard as it is to learn English, it’s a pretty good thing for English learners to know right up front what they’re getting into!
As long as the dashes are consistently spaced/not-spaced throughout the whole work, it’s good. Any rule is immediately contradicted by another rule-maker, so pick one and follow it. For the record, I like the space-surrounded dash. Give me a “ta-daa,” I say, or give me a comma.
I’m with you on the ta-daaa! aspect of the em-dash. Generally speaking, diagrams of my sentences look like blueprints for the space shuttle.
I ended up going sans-spaces. When in doubt, go with the Strunk and White, right? They’re like Yoda and Obi-Wan.
As a book designer, I often grapple with such syntax conundrums. Some authors are em-dash happy, and you’ve got to settle on a consistent approach. I first strip out the “faux em dashes” (like “–” and ” – “) in a couple passes of find-and-replace, substituting them with the em dash and NO surrounding spaces. Like Strunk and White, and the designerly “less is more” (minimalist) mindset, my belief is that the spaces don’t really contribute anything. The ems are adding the space needed to off-set the phrases already.
Ha! My attempt in the previously posted comment to demonstrate “faux em dashes” using double and single dashes was foiled by the blog software – which converted them to ems!
Even WordPress is in on the conspiracy to keep our dashes non-standardized. At any rate, I went with your method of ems with no spaces. If you can’t trust Strunk and White, who CAN you trust?