In my final year of college, I took a creative writing class taught by Dr. F— I’m not providing his full name just in case he doesn’t want that. The class was a delightful break from all the teaching classes. I was getting a degree in Pre-K to 4th grade teaching and changed to Educational Studies two weeks into my final semester. It was my senior year and I wanted to take something fun. It challenged a part of my brain that needed the challenge. Dr. F, thank you for teaching!
I should get back to the point — the em dash point. Dr. F LOVES the em dash —and I love it too. I wanted to make a blog post about it so you can learn to love —. I’ll even show you how to type it! Are you ready? Let’s go!
The em dash is used in place of a hyphen – and/or parentheses ( ) and/or commas , . It’s a stylistic way to alter the writing.
So you want to know how to write an em dash? It essentially is a hyphen as long as a capital M — and if you want to type it just use two hyphens – – (without the spaces between the hyphens and the two words surrounding the em dash).
I hope you learned—or will learn—something new today!