Hi Writing-Community, Often, I don’t know which punctuation mark I should use. Don’t get me wrong! It’s difficult for me to choose between brackets, comma or em-dash. So, now is my question: What is for which situation? Could you please explain it?! Bye, beehoney
The main difference between the punctuation marks you mention is that em dashes are by far the more versatile. Just be careful that you're not using them recklessly. For example, resist the temptation to replace semicolons with em dashes. Which is something I do from time to time. Go here for a good overview of the amazing em dash. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html Here's some passages that put the em dash to work... btw, you can use them within dialogue exchanges, which is my preference. My only problem with em dash etiquette is for some ridiculous reason it's acceptable to put a small space before and after the em dash in articles and essays (journalists do it), but for literature they bump up against the word before and after the em dash. It's very ugly. I put a small space before and after... because I'm a rebel that way. For a middle-aged man, Gael retained a tireless vitality. The man who managed animal acts at an opera house in decline — and at present, with a twelve-year-old girl in tow — resembled a disheveled lion that had an appetite for bourbon and brothels. A deep scar cut across his left cheek, a souvenir he had acquired on one of his travels; whether it was given him by a leopard or bear, one could not be certain, for the details, embellished always with wine, had a habit of changing from one telling to the next. Only the perpetrator herself — a jealous lover, a Negress from one of the southern islands — knew the full truth. ___________________________________________ Valerie put a hand on Rosemarie’s shoulder. “Would you do me a small kindness? It’s a silly thing, really — I’d like you to keep my little honeybee with you at all times, pinned over your heart... for luck.” ___________________________________________ “Yes, I most certainly do!” Rosemarie said, and swooshed an imaginary sword, crisscrossing the air in front of Valerie before running her friend through to the hilt. “She was a duelist! It is said that while in Paris she attended a masquerade ball disguised as a man and kissed a young woman on the dance floor so passionately that it enraged three noblemen, who in turn challenged her to a duel. The three men, all expert with the blade, met Julie at dawn in a courtyard; they were gentlemen and as such offered to step up one at a time. The story goes that she removed her cloak, revealing her true sex, and announced to their astonishment, ‘Stand and deliver so the Devil may take ya!’ She took them on all at once! But she was shrewd — dueling was no longer fashionable, the king having outlawed it. She had no lust for spilling blood needlessly, so she let the men retreat with glancing wounds and what was left of their pride. The three noblemen could say nothing further of the encounter or else suffer the most dreadful embarrassment imaginable.” ___________________________________________ “It is said that on Corsica the male goats are most”— Rosemarie looked up at the ceiling, searching for the word— “prolifèrant! Gael told me a story about the convent at Saint-Florent, of which the nuns are very industrious, seeing to the good works of the Lord through diligent enterprise. Twice a month the old women of the convent venture out to a lowland plateau to milk the goats. They brew the, ‘ pudding,’ as Gael referred to it, with lavender and bottle it to sell to the queen and her ladies at exorbitant prices. Do you know they wash their hair with it! It’s much sought after.” ___________________________________________ Valerie took a shallow breath and parted the drapes, just a enough to peer through the sliver, and observed him sitting comfortably in the chair— though it was a chair in name only. Indeed, it looked as though he sat on the throne of an impoverished emperor who had distressingly bad taste in furniture; the thing was carved in florid detail, from the buxom mermaids at the armrests, whose ample fishtails wrapped about the piece’s legs, to the cartouche above the seated man’s head that framed a vivid scene of Neptune, unclad and wild-eyed, riding a chariot pulled by mighty seahorses into a primordial storm of sea and sky — his robust trident at the ready.
