The chief effect of this kind of bracketing is, I think, intuitive and rhythmical, adding to Humbert’s pompous purr, but there is a secondary effect of conjoining the ideas of transgression (his arrest) and seeming normalcy (finding a job), a pas de deux central to Lolita’s thematic heart.Ī more contemporary user of the em dash is Donald Antrim. The long sentence at the end of the first paragraph closes with a short clause set off by an em dash, and the short sentence at the beginning of the next starts with a shorter clause also enclosed by the em. ![]() Notice how the use of em dashes here, not strictly prescribed by any pressing grammatical need (the first could be justly replaced with a comma, the second eliminated), are used to create an internal structure that bridges paragraphs. I found a job-teaching English to a group of adults in Auteuil. I launched upon an “Histoire abregee de la poesie anglaise” for a prominent publishing firm, and then started to compile that manual of French literature for English-speaking students (with comparisons drawn from English writers) which was to occupy me throughout the forties-and the last volume of which was almost ready for press by the time of my arrest. A representative passage chosen completely at random: In Lolita, Nabokov is engaged in creating a calibrated ironic voice that half-emulates speech while retaining its smooth literary surface, and em dashes enable a more precise pacing of words and thoughts from the sentence to paragraph level. ![]() But in a more general sense, he simply employs them as part of his exemplary stylistic machinery, using them as counterweights against commas, as parenthetical ballast and rhetorical cog. The locus of Nabokov’s attention is usually at least half trained on the fictional document he’s producing, so em dashes often serve as a kind of in-text footnote. The maestro of the em dash-as he was with many things (and apologies here, it is difficult not to annoyingly play, or seem to play, on a punctuation’s usage while writing about it)-was probably Vladimir Nabokov. This space allows different authors to use the em dash in different ways, and so the em dash can be especially revealing of an author’s style, even their character. It is the doppelgänger of the punctuation world, a talented mimic impersonating other punctuation, but not exactly, leaving space to shade meaning. Depending on the context, the em dash can take the place of commas, parentheses, or colons-in each case to slightly different effect.” The “slightly different” part is, to me, the em dash’s appeal summarized. From The Punctuation Guide: “The em dash is perhaps the most versatile punctuation mark. It might be useful to include an official definition of the em. I don’t remember being taught to use it in elementary, middle, or high school English classes I’m not even sure I was aware of it then, and I have no clear recollection of when or why I began to rely on it, yet it has become an indispensable component of my writing. You can get along without it and most people do. It is not, so to speak, an essential punctuation mark, the same way commas or periods are essential. And my love for it is emphasized by the fact that many writers never, or rarely, use it-even disdain it. ![]() I love the em dash in a way that is difficult to explain, which is, probably, the motivation of this essay. Anthony Powell’s colon (pardon the inadvertent image) is as signature as Kyrie Irving’s crossover or Rihanna’s throaty cry.įor me, there is no punctuation mark as versatile and appealing as the em dash. Patterns of punctuation usage are the writerly equivalent of an athlete’s go-to moves, or a singer’s peculiar timbre and range-those little dots and squiggles, in a sense, encode your voice. And in aggregate, over the course of a text, the rhythms of punctuation advance an author’s worldview and personality as surely as any plot or theme. ![]() Periods, commas, colons, semi-colons: in their use or non-use and in their order and placement, can represent elaboration, conjecture, doubt, finality. Punctuation, largely invisible and insignificant for normal people, as it should be, is a highly personal matter for writers.
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