I'm starting this new blog so I have an outward-facing space to highlight my writing, editing, and frozen dessert–making skills.
Since September 2005, I've been regularly writing Hawleyblog, which, depending on the individual post, has maybe been about food, current events, theater, music, and/or other topics that interest me but has also always been a diary of the events in my life. And I've enjoyed having that record to look back on. For instance, if I want to relive the time I took my then-13-year-old identical-twin nephews to the New York Hall of Science museum in Queens, I can reread one of my favorite Hawleyblog posts, from December 2011. (And you can read it, too, if you request the password I've recently protected that blog behind. Just send an email to bill@billhawley.net.)
The main purpose of this new blog is, frankly, to sell myself to potential employers and clients. I'll use it to demonstrate I can write and self-edit and to tout some of my accomplishments as a copy editor, line editor, and small-business owner. And I'll no doubt also run the occasional photo of my cute dog and my cuter husband.
I also plan to discuss matters of English-language grammar, diction, and punctuation. And now *cracks knuckles* I'm going to write about how I like to use the hyphen's longer and less-well-known punctuation-mark friends: the en dash and the em dash.
I used an en dash in the first sentence of this post, in a compound, attributive adjective in which one of the components of the compound ("frozen dessert") consisted of two words. Some editors would prefer two hyphens ("frozen-dessert-making") to the en dash, and I don't necessarily think that's wrong. It's just not my preferred punctuation method.
Just about everyone agrees on using an en dash rather than multiple hyphens when a proper noun is involved. "National Book Award–winning author" looks so much better than "National-Book-Award-winning author"; the former construction respects the integrity of the multiword proper noun.
As for em dashes, I prefer using them to set off a fragment of a sentence that reads like an important but ultimately omittable1 aside. Here's an example from the November 2009 issue—the final issue2—of Gourmet magazine that also features a classic, proper noun–incorporating en dash:
Our Pennsylvania Dutch–inspired Thanksgiving menu brings together all those things—savory and sweet, new and nostalgic—that make any Thanksgiving an occasion to remember. (p. 24)
(By the way, I would have deleted the first Thanksgiving in that sentence.)
I don't like using em dashes in a situation where a semicolon is the obvious choice. At my last full-time-with-benefits job, as a senior editor who oversaw a team of copy editors at a business-and-finance magazine, I coined the term em-dash fault3 for the joining of two complete sentences by an em dash. Here are two examples from copy that was routed to us back in the day:
It comes apart easily no matter how cold the metal gets—even a novice won't spill a drop.
"I think there's still a measure of skepticism that exists toward Wall Street—that's not going to change."
In both cases, we replaced the em dash with a semicolon, whose main job is to separate two sentences that are deemed worthy of a closer connection than a period provides.
And the other night, in my bedside reading, The Queen of the Night, by Alexander Chee,4 I came across these two examples of an em-dash fault in rapid succession:
All that would be required was for her to find something I'd forgotten about, some incontrovertible proof—much as I knew her kind, I was sure she knew mine. (p. 305)
Each day I was to begin at the piano, and to begin with my posture at the piano—I was to sit erect, head slightly lifted. (p. 315)
In between, I found this dash-filled mess of a sentence:
He was quite small in stature by comparison to Turgenev, who kissed him on both cheeks—Louis looked a bit like an old fox in evening dress, his whiskers and sharp eyes quizzical as he took me in—all of his weight was in his eyes, his gaze—all of his body raised up so he might see. (p. 311)
If I'd been this novel's copy editor—and I wish I had been, because it seems like it would have been a great project to have been involved with—I would have put periods after cheeks and took me in. And I would have worded and punctuated the last part this way: "All of his weight was in his eyes, his gaze. And all of his body raised up so he might see."
Though it might be seen as inconsistent, I take no issue with a complete sentence being plunked down in the middle of another complete sentence and being set off by em dashes. Here's an example of what I mean from that same Gourmet magazine:
Here are six sweet, seasonal breaks from the norm—fig crostata, anyone?—engineered to add a little variety to your dessert offerings. (p. 42)
I could also easily see those three words inside parentheses, another fine option when you're inserting a sentence inside another one.
Thanks for reading this first post of mine.
1Some believe the old-school omissible is preferable to omittable.
2I'm reading that old magazine now because I had stowed it away, still sealed in its plastic bag, back then, because I thought it would be fun to treat it like a mint-condition comic book. I opened it up to start reading it just prior to our move to Florida, when I was going through a lot of old crap I wished I'd recycled or thrown out years ago.
3The only reference to an em-dash fault I found online when I searched just now was on the last page of this pdf that includes the postscript and a list of corrections for a book called Bad Medicine. I'm curious to know whether the person who compiled this list has the same definition for an em-dash fault as I do.
4I got a little carried away with footnotes in this post, but it gave me some practice at creating superscripts in Squarespace's markdown mode. I finished The Queen of the Night last night. It was a great read, with oodles of period details and a captivating main character.