Comment by jameshart
3 years ago
Reasonable choices. And a good description of a specific use for the em dash. But I think it’s a poor mind that can only conceive of a single use for a punctuation mark.
We could also use em dashes to signal excitedly running from one thought to the next—as if we’re just riffing on an idea—too fast to be interrupted—wouldn’t that be amazing?
Or we can use the em dash to slow us down—to pause and reflect on what we just said.
Or in dialog:
“Perhaps we can use it to signal an unexpected inter—“
“-rogation?”
“No, an interruption.”
“Yes, that would make more sense.”
“Oh! I just thought of something—we could also use it to indicate stunned silence.”
“—“
“Exactly.”
It is easy to conceive of uses, having a consistent style which conveys what you want to most any reader is another thing. If you had wrote all those examples without using the text to explain them the reader would have to stop and think about what you are doing and that is not a good thing.
Sure, but any given work could introduce such a use within the first few pages and the reader would be accustomed to it pretty quickly.
Too quote myself "consistent and well defined use is most important," and I have repeated this sentiment in most if not every post I have made in this thread. My point to the previous comment was that if you were not consistent it would not make sense, if his examples did not explain themselves than they would leave the reader stopping to figure out what is going on at each punctuation mark. You can break your own conventions within a work but those conventions need to be well established before you do so and you need a good reason to do so, breaking your own conventions because relying on the punctuation is easier than relying on the language or on whim is a terrible idea.