Against the Em Dash

Okay: En dash: –
Ugly: Em dash: —

There is no punctuation I distrust more than the em dash. It interrupts like a drunk guest at a quiet dinner, barging in with too much force, too much ego. It insists on being noticed. It wants to reshape the rhythm of a sentence rather than serve it. Writers lean on it as if it were a magic trick, as if it could make fragments profound simply by connecting them with a long horizontal line.

The result is clutter. A false sense of drama. The em dash does not guide thought, it hijacks it.

The en dash, though, I can live with. It is quieter. More disciplined. It keeps to its lane, marking spans of time or ranges of numbers. It serves without drawing attention to itself. Where the em dash shouts, the en dash hums.

I accept the en dash because it knows its place. It adds clarity without demanding applause. It does its job and leaves the words intact.

The em dash, on the other hand, will always feel like a crutch. It turns prose into stage directions. It breaks what should flow. And the more I see it, the more it reminds me how easily writers surrender to shortcuts.

Perhaps that is why I dislike it so much. Not because it is ugly on the page, though it is. But because it tempts us into thinking disruption is depth. The en dash may never inspire, but at least it never lies.