How many of you actually manually use em-dashes?

[Cipiteca396]

I only use hyphens, even when other dashes would be more appropriate.

— – -

 

[bulmabriefs144]

Em-dashes sometimes fail to register on certain publising sites. So I hate them and always replace them with regular dashes.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

I use em dash; I'm a non-native English speaker.

 

[bumblebeelz]

Native English speaker. I use them, although I try to be discerning in where I dump them; usually when dialogue or a thought has been interrupted. Or when I really want to emphasize a certain line. But mostly, I stick to commas or semi-colons.

 

[Keene]

I use em dashes for various purposes, most notably for interruptions in dialogue...

---

“Umm.” Noburu looked between Amelia, Serena, and Seonmi in turn. “Sure. I’m ready. I just—”

---

...and to delinimate narration that doesn't affect the flow of dialogue:

---

“Hey!” Amelia protested, puffing out her cheeks. “Firstly!”—a finger was thrust in front of Serena’s face—”I’m not terrifying! I might be shockingly adorable and cute, but not terrifying! And secondly”—another finger—”I’m not someone to be handled! Unless…” Amelia hesitated, her face suddenly breaking out into a wide grin. “Unless you’re doing the handling, of course!”

---

I also use it to emphasise the end of sentences, in place of a colon, when you restate what was just said differently:

---

The demon shook his head, tapping the table. “The Indefatigable is an Orb-class—a heavy cruiser. That’s enough firepower, wrapped up with enough homogenous rolled armour, that even a fleet of pirates[..]

---

“It doesn’t fill me with confidence… What do you think?” she asked, raising her head to look at her air tactician—a Samino man named Yamaga.

---

Although, the other day I just notice that I thought google docs was making me an em dash when I double tapped the dash key, but it has been making me an en dash (–) and not an em dash (—) all this time. So I kinda have 400k+ words to go over and CTRL+R the dashes...

P.S I have also used the en dash once or twice, when you have a range of numbers. I.E: 150–200 A.D. Can't find it offhand right now.

 

[Clo]

I'm 46 and French Canadian—not that it matters—and use Em-dashes all over the place. ('Tis just the way the neurodivergent brain thinks).

Of course, I use other methods, such as commas or patenthesis, roughly as frequently... But!—

—But I find the one place I can't easily replace them is when interrupting dialogue or narration.

 

[RainyLiquid]

Im so dumb I was sitting here wondering what an em-dash was before I remembered... I don't use them that much.

 

[Kamael89]

Yes, Non-Native English Speaker. By the way, from the poll results, there seem to be quite a lot of non-native English speakers here.

 

[bulmabriefs144]

I use em dashes for various purposes, most notably for interruptions in dialogue...

---

“Umm.” Noburu looked between Amelia, Serena, and Seonmi in turn. “Sure. I’m ready. I just—”

---

...and to delinimate narration that doesn't affect the flow of dialogue:

---

“Hey!” Amelia protested, puffing out her cheeks. “Firstly!”—a finger was thrust in front of Serena’s face—”I’m not terrifying! I might be shockingly adorable and cute, but not terrifying! And secondly”—another finger—”I’m not someone to be handled! Unless…” Amelia hesitated, her face suddenly breaking out into a wide grin. “Unless you’re doing the handling, of course!”

---

I also use it to emphasise the end of sentences, in place of a colon, when you restate what was just said differently:

---

The demon shook his head, tapping the table. “The Indefatigable is an Orb-class—a heavy cruiser. That’s enough firepower, wrapped up with enough homogenous rolled armour, that even a fleet of pirates[..]

---

“It doesn’t fill me with confidence… What do you think?” she asked, raising her head to look at her air tactician—a Samino man named Yamaga.

---

Although, the other day I just notice that I thought google docs was making me an em dash when I double tapped the dash key, but it has been making me an en dash (–) and not an em dash (—) all this time. So I kinda have 400k+ words to go over and CTRL+R the dashes...

P.S I have also used the en dash once or twice, when you have a range of numbers. I.E: 150–200 A.D. Can't find it offhand right now.

The problem with em dashes is that some of those examples could use semicolons, commas, or parentheses.

And usually the em dash creates a situation where unlike parentheses or some other type of bracket, the sidetrack wasn't helpful (remove it), or required a reread because em dashes don't as clearly mark the beginning or end.

Let's examine your samples.

[rewrite]
“Hey!” Amelia puffed out her cheeks. “Firstly!” she protested, thrusting a finger in front of Serena’s face, ”I’m not terrifying! I might be shockingly adorable and cute, but not terrifying! And secondly," her hand withdrew and thrust again, and another finger came out, ”I’m not someone to be handled! Unless…” Amelia hesitated, her face suddenly breaking out into a wide grin. She finished, “Unless you’re doing the handling, of course!”

The demon shook his head, tapping the table. "The Indefatigable is an Orb-class. That’s a heavy cruiser with enough firepower, wrapped up with enough homogenous rolled armour, that even a fleet of pirates[...]"

"It doesn’t fill me with confidence… What do you think?" she asked, raising her head to look at her air tactician, a Samino man named Yamaga.
[/rewrite]

Basically only the first one doesn't get a rewrite.

"I tend to use question marks and exclamation marks as commas anyway, so the sentence runs like that Amelia one. I also have a pet peeve against unattached quotes, even if it's still clear who said it, especially after reading too many sentences where it was unclear who said what. What I don't have a peeve against is the idea that an action can take the place of a speech type," I gave a thumbs up to this idea.

[I said as I] in the above sentence is implied because it's me talking while doing those actions.

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

I'm french, and the use of parenthesis in a novel is a bit taboo, it's seen as unprofessional. It can be here in an essay or in academic text, but in a story it's distracting and will always be replaced by em dashes.

So, yes, I use them. When I use them, I first try to use comas, but if it doesn't work, I use em dashes. For exemple :

After they had finished eating, and Cyrielle declined about a dozen times to have another dish served free of charge — the chef seemed to think she was way too thin — Emilio ordered coffee and they finished their meal while cleaning their palate.

There are already a lot of comas, it would be difficult to understand the sentence if I added more, and parenthesis are out of the question, so I use em dashes

 

[BurningSunlvl99]

I don't, chat gpt puts it in. But for a chapter of 1,000 words i don't think 8-10 em-dashes are a problem.
For context, I am not a native english speaker, i never truly learned English systematically. What is got is through watching anime and reading novel.
Also, while reading do people really notice things like comma, dash, semi colon and such.

 

[HisDivineShadow]

I don't, chat gpt puts it in. But for a chapter of 1,000 words i don't think 8-10 em-dashes are a problem.

Actually, it's a huge problem

 

[EphemeralEmperor]

I just use em dashes as a way of getting in a thought that a clause after a semicolon or a period would be too long to pause for. Something like,

John sure likes apples—especially the Granny Smith kind—he brought us each a tub to enjoy.

Maybe its bad usage, but its what I use it for. Short like an epiphany.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

I just use em dashes as a way of getting in a thought that a clause after a semicolon or a period would be too long to pause for. Something like,

John sure likes apples—especially the Granny Smith kind—he brought us each a tub to enjoy.

Maybe its bad usage, but its what I use it for. Short like an epiphany.

Nah. That is actually a correct use of em.

 

[H0LL0W]

I have used em dashes long before the rise of AI. It's made me upset that people might think I use AI in my writing so I am thinking of not using them anymore.
However in word I just simply used autocorrect settings to change emdash to the actual hyphen, or I copy paste them in.