The presidential candidates sure use a lot — a whole lot — of em dashes

The 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — bless their hearts — have a real affinity for a particular type of punctuation. And no — it's not the semicolon. 

It makes sense that politicians seeking the presidency would be so into the em dash: It's sleek, long, and powerful, inevitably connoting importance and urgency. On Twitter, candidates want voters to know they're serious about the issues — so serious, in fact, that they're willing to use the punchiest piece of punctuation to talk about them.

It should be noted that I am not against the em dash. In fact, I love to use it, particularly because I finally learned the keyboard shortcut a few weeks ago. Sometimes an em dash simply enhances a piece's voice in a way that a comma, period, or colon can't. (We don't speak in perfect prose; sometimes we speak in strings of asides. In some cases, that approach works better for writing, too.) Despite the em dash's controversial reputation, you'd be hard-pressed to find a writer who never pulls one out from time to time. Read more...

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