Emily dashes…

These days, em dashes are – for some – a grammatical no-go for fear of being cancelled as AI slop. But as Celeste Moure points out, “Yes, AI does use em dashes (along with every other punctuation mark known to Unicode). But so did Emily Dickinson – she basically treated the em dash as her personal Morse code – and built entire poems out of em dashes.”

For Emily, the em dash was not so much her punctuation of choice as her poetic calling card:

“The Brain – is wider than the Sky –

For – put them side by side –

The one the other will contain

With ease – and You – beside – ”

So here’s to Emily, and indeed to everyone using em dashes and all the other elements of grammar, to add greater meaning and melody to their writing.

Em dashes? Emily dashes, more like!