2B
Wednesday, February 10, 2016 // The Statement
MARCO RUBIO
ON THE
RECORD
“We are taking our message to families that are struggling
to raise their children in the 21st Century, because as you
saw, Jeanette and I are raising our four children in the
21st Century.”
— U.S Sen. MARCO RUBIO (R-Fla) on raising children today
during a campaign rally in Nashua, New Hampshire.
***
“And we know how hard it’s become to instill our values
in our kids instead of the values they try to ram down our
throats.”
—RUBIO at the same rally in Nashua, in the next sentence.
***
“In the 21st Century, it’s become harder than ever to instill
in your children the values they teach in our homes and in
our church, instead of the values that they try to ram down
our throats in the movies, in music and in popular culture.”
—RUBIO at the same rally, in the very next sentence.
Copy That: A Love Letter to the Em-Dash
I
’ve been told that I use too many dashes. My high school AP Language and Composi-
tion teacher would often draw an X through each dash I used in my essays, suggest-
ing that they detracted from the message I was trying to convey. In peer review — in
both high school and college — my peers have frequently written in workshop letters,
“Why do you use so many dashes where you could just use commas?” I’ve never listened
to them, though — without a dash, my sentences wouldn’t convey the same meaning.
They wouldn’t elicit the same pause in the reader’s head, and they wouldn’t set the sec-
tions of the sentence apart from each other in the same way. Plus, commas are overused.
I have an aversion to the unnecessary comma — even if the sentence is grammatically
correct, a comma should never be used when it doesn’t need to be. When in doubt, I go
with the dash.
I have a confession, though. Until I started working at the Daily, I didn’t know
what an em-dash was. Sure, I had seen them, but I thought it was just a different font, or
something, that some authors knew about and I didn’t. The dash I used in my high school
and early college essays was the en-dash – the one that’s in-between the hyphen and the
em-dash (and the one I used in this sentence). It’s easier to make — you just type a word,
a space, a dash, another space, and then continue on with your sentence. It’s much more
intuitive than the “option-shift-dash” that makes the em-dash. After just a couple shifts
at the Daily, though, I found that I’d been converted. The em-dash came naturally to me,
and it just looked better. It had the effect I’d desired but never quite got out of the en-dash:
It was longer, and it gave the emphasis that I wanted to force my readers to notice. What
I’m trying to say here is that I’m in love with the em-dash. This seems like the right time
to switch forms — specifically, to the form of a love letter.
Dear em-dash,
I love you. You are my favorite type of punctuation. I’m not just saying you’re
the best type of dash — that’s obvious. I’m saying you’re better than every single punc-
tuation mark. Commas, semi-colons, periods — all of them. Periods are necessary, sure,
but they lack personality. Commas are too plentiful. Everyone uses them; they’re boring
now — they have no allure. And semi-colons are replaceable — I can’t think of a time
when a semi-colon couldn’t be replaced by an em-dash or period to strengthen the sen-
tence. That leaves you, em-dash. My one true love. I don’t care if my professors don’t like
you or my classmates tell me to leave you for someone else. I’m going to keep using you.
Don’t take that the wrong way — I need you, em-dash. I know we’ve only known each
other for two years, but I’m committed to you, I promise. You’ll be a part of my life as long
as the alt-shift-dash MacBook shortcut exists.
Love always,
Alexis
B Y A L E X I S N O W I C K I
“I take the long way to class, listen to music and just let
everything soak in. It lets me take my mind off of things
and helps me focus on what’s important.”
– Engineering sophomore ANDRE SOFIAN
ZOEY HOLMSTROM/DAILY
THOUGHT BUBBLE
DE-STRESSING
ILLUSTRATION BY EMILIE FARRUGIA