Teaching myself to stop using the em dash has been a real pain. It helps with the flow of reading particularly when talking about technical content. I’ve gone back to the semicolon, sadly.
em dashes are typographical faffery and have always been (in my opinion) a marker of writers who take themselves, and the surface level of their style, far too serious.
also me when people accuse me of being ai slop for using em dashes just because big tech trained their models by stealing authors work.
Teaching myself to stop using the em dash has been a real pain. It helps with the flow of reading particularly when talking about technical content. I’ve gone back to the semicolon, sadly.
to quote david herman’s michael bolton in office space:
em dashes are typographical faffery and have always been (in my opinion) a marker of writers who take themselves, and the surface level of their style, far too serious.
just use commas, my friend
em dashes, en dashes, and commas have different meanings and uses
aren’t all of them “do a short pause”?
no.