Do you use em dash?

[blackcrowcrowd]

I wondered that too.
cant even google it, cause EM is standard for a number of technical things. Electro-Mechanical among them.

wait, EM.
as in... EM-dash.
i just don't get the sprint part.

in other news, I use the, what do they call it? The "stanford comma"? I just like it. Flows better to me.

Uh... what? Then what do you mean by EM sprint

 

[CharlesEBrown]

It was a joke. Can't maintain a true dash at my age.

I use an EM dash whenever editing software suggests it. Used to use it a lot - even had the ASCII code for it memorized, along with ° and a few others, but that was back in the 90s and early aughts.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

Yes. Quite a lot, actually.

 

[LeslieLevendale]

I have been binge reading a certain chinese webnovels and it seems to use quite a bit of em dashes. Do you guys use them? If yes (or no), why?

I think em dash is an essential tool for prose. I use it to create pause, add emphasis, or , I don't know, slip in a thought.

Not really. I never used it before AI, and dont really want to use it now cuz of... you know.

I did notice that editing softwares overuse em-dash. For that matter, so does AI.

But em-dash is still a good tool.

Some authors use them instinctively or because they are very good at punctuation, em...I don't know, because they picked it up at school.

Whatever...

That said, there are other ways to get the same effect.

Use whatever is your style.

Commit whatever crime you fancy committing against English language including against punctuation.

Be yourself on your pages and your readers will love you for it.

And f... the editors. Well, erm..., perhaps not verbatim.

This is my humble and "gentle" advice.

 

[Avarice_Of_The_Seven]

I used to use them a lot in the beginning, but now I only use them in a very specific situation. It's half because I'm scared of being accused of using AI, and half because I often forget the exact alt code for em dash (Which is alt+0151).

In the beginning, I didn't even know how to add an em dash, so I copy pasted it while polishing a chapter.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

I used to use them a lot in the beginning, but now I only use them in a very specific situation. It's half because I'm scared of being accused of using AI, and half because I often forget the exact alt code for em dash (Which is alt+0151).

In the beginning, I didn't even know how to add an em dash, so I copy pasted it while polishing a chapter.

To be honest, I use a lot of alt codes. ›‹«» for example. Ia also know how to use em Dash on alt -> —
But I mostly use the automatically replaced (in Word, when you use hyphen and then enter it will be replaced, so you can hit backspace and continue typing) en Dash, because I dislike that em Dash is so long. I always feel called out in situations like these, because I use it like em Dash, I just don't like how long it is. en Dash ftw.

(EDIT: I should probably back up that I'm not used to seeing the em Dash, because the way you use the em Dash is how you use the en Dash in my native language; we rarely ever use the actual em Dash. But I carried that into my English texts because nobody actually ever cared and I find it ugly.)