Em Dash For Quotes

Next time you hit a speed bump otherwise known as the age-old question “Why are you still single?” look ’em in the eye and say: “Because I’m too fabulous to settle.

I've always said that you know you're a poet when you type an em dash and you hit the delete button, and you type a colon and you hit the delete button, and you type an em dash and you hit the delete button, and you type a colon and you hit the delete button. If you can do that for about three hours straight, trying to figure out which one is the best one, if you can do that for three hours and call that a good time, then you're probably a poet.

Believe it or not, missy, back in my salad days, I was what we called a gay blade, he says. Had a fine manly figger. I had dash an charm an... oh, I was devilish handsome, no word of a lie. Females flocked to me, helpless moths to my deadly flame. There you go, says Em. You jest need to scrub up some.

If you surrender your self-worth to someone who doesn’t see your true value, what happens when someone comes along who wants to give you what you’re worth instead of what you’ll settle for? The bottom line is this: You’ve got to know your worth, at yard sales and in life, because a lot of people who are going to try to talk you out of it. If they can’t see your value, let ‘em keep on movin’! Someone out there is looking for exactly what you’ve got and will never try and undercut your value or question your worth. Some things in life just can’t be bartered over or placed on the sale rack, and your self-worth is at the top of the list.

The next time you check the box “S” for single, remember this: singleness is no longer a lack of options but a choice—a choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status and to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out. Whether or not you have someone in the passenger seat, you are still the driver of your own life and can take whatever road you choose. So the next time you hit a speed bump, otherwise known as the age-old question, “Why are you still single?” look ’em in the eye and say, “Because I’m too strong, too smart, and too fabulous to settle.

All the librarians turned their heads to me in a collective shush. “I’m afraid you have to survive library school, put up with the general public on a daily basis, and endure several years of budget cuts in order to deserve these drinks,” Chris told me kindly. “But someday, Dash, all this will be yours! We know how to spot ’em, and you’re a young, temporarily one-eyed librarian in the rough!

48  On a Mac, you can create an en dash by typing option-hyphen. On an iPhone, if you lean gently on the hyphen key, an en dash will present itself, as well as an em dash and a bullet. On a PC, I believe one types command–3–do the hokey pokey, or some such.

Addie has said so many hellos, but that was the first and only time she got to say good-bye. That kiss, like a piece of long-awaited punctuation. Not the em dash of an interrupted line, or the ellipsis of a quiet escape, but a period, a close, parenthesis, an end.

Most authors would confess they hear an inner editor, an internal naysayer that hampers and nitpicks their attempts at first drafts. Mine has taken the form of Athena. Haughtily she peruses and dismisses every story idea I attempt: "too trite", "too formulaic", "too white". She's even harsher at the sentence level: "the rhythm's off", "that imagery doesn't work", "seriously, another em dash?

Mad' sounds dashing, daring and admirable when you hold the tattered flag in the midst of battle and expired natives lie all over the carpet with holes in 'em that you put there. 'Mad' is less impressive written on a form by a commissioner of lunacy as you're turned over to the hospitallers of St Mary of Bedlam to be dunked in ice water because your latest 'scrape' was running starkers down Oxford Street while gibbering like a baboon.

Life is one never-ending edit... In writing about my life, editing is time travel, collapsing, folding, expanding time. Gathering disparate wispy threads into neat chapters and sections. Memories rearranged, pulled apart, de-emphasized. Secrets and fears erased in between drafts only to emerge again as tangents to be deleted or set aside. Invisible track changes that reframe a narrative only to be solidified, trashed, and reborn. Filtering truths until the most essential elements remain. Em dashes that link; ellipses that prolong. A constant telling and retelling until the act itself threatens to weaken the blood and guts of a piece. Editing is a dialogue with demons, ancestors, and the future; a witchy dark art that summons the forces of the universe into legibility.

When I first started dual enrollment at Lake City Community College you could print in the library for free. I printed whole books. Like James Legge's 1891 "Tao Te Ching" translation. He was to parentheses what Emily Dickinson was to the Em Dash. "To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (at­tain­ment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a dis­ease." I'd sit around listening to records as their dot matrix printer whirred. Slowly printing a book from the 6th century BCE. They had those hard blue plastic headphones. Your ears would ache. But Rimsky-Korsakov was pretty metal. Herbert Benson's "The Relaxation Response" had me picking "ZOOM" as my meditation mantra. Reading Vonnegut with his nonlinear narrative. Books will often have Acknowledgments. A page or two. Things that helped you. What matters. Everything I write is an Acknowledgment. What matters. And I've printed whole books.

What's that, mister?" "That's the green for the gentleman's coat. No--don't pinch it, or you'll get it all over you. Yes, you can put the cap on. Yes, that's to keep it from drying up. Yes, put it back in the box.... That's yellow. No, I know there isn't any yellow in the picture, but I want it to mix with the green to make it brighter. You'll see. Don't forget the cap. What? Oh, anywhere in the box. White--yes, it's a big tube, isn't it? You see, you have to put a little white into most of the colours--why? Well, they wouldn't come right without it. You'll see when I do the sky. What's that? You want the dog made white all over? No, I can't make it a picture of Scruggs. Why not? Well, Scruggs isn't the right sort of dog to take out shooting. Well, he's not, that's why. This has got to be a retriever. All right, well, I'll put in a liver-and-white spaniel. Oh, well, it's rather a pretty dog with long ears. Yes, I daresay it is like Colonel Amery's. No, I don't know Colonel Amery. Did you put the cap on that white paint? Dash it! if you go losing things like that I'll send you back to Mother and she'll spank you. What? Well, the gentleman has a green coat because he's a gamekeeper. Possibly Colonel Amery's gamekeeper doesn't, but this one does. No, I don't know why gamekeepers wear green coats--to keep them warm, I expect. No, I haven't got any brown paint same as that tree-trunk. I get that by mixing other colours. No, I've got all the colours I want now. You can put 'em away and shut the box. Yes, I can tell pretty well how much I want before I start. That's called a palette knife. No, it isn't meant to be sharp. It's meant for cleaning your palette and so on. Some people use a knife to paint with. Yes, it's nice and wiggly, but it won't stand too much of that kind of treatment, my lad. Yes, of course you can paint with a knife if you want to. You can paint with your fingers if it comes to that. No, I shouldn't advise you to try. Yes, well, it makes a rougher kind of surface, all blobs and chunks of paint. All right, I'll show you presently. Yes, I'm going to begin with the sky. Why? Well, why do you think? Yes, because it's at the top. Yes, of course that blue's too dark, but I'm going to put some white in it. Yes, and some green. You didn't know there was any green in the sky? Well, there is. And sometimes there's purple and pink too. No, I'm not going to paint a purple and pink sky. The gentleman and the dogs have only just started out. It's morning in this picture. Yes, I know, on the other side they're coming home with a lot of birds and things. I'll put a pink and purple sunset into that if you're good and don't ask too many questions. No, be a good girl and don't joggle my arm. Oh, Lord!

How about you?” I asked, trying to keep words happening. “Play any sports?” “I might have.” “Instruments?” “No.” “Did you grow up in a state that starts with the letter A, M, or T?” Her lips did this twisty thing to the side. “Isn’t that how we’re doing this? Process of elimination?” Daryn brushed some sand off her jeans. “The less we do of this, the better it’ll be for both of us.” I started laughing. I didn’t know what had just hit me. Daryn laughed too, more at me than with me, but it didn’t matter. I enjoyed it. “You run a pretty good defense, Martin. You know that?” “I’ve gotten better.” “Does this mean you’re not going to tell me about the downloads you get? Or how often you get ’em? Or how long you’ve been doing this? Like, is this your first assignment, or have you been seeking—seekering?—your whole life? And, like, when you saw me—you said you saw me—was I excelling at protecting secret powerful objects? Doing epic War shit? How amazing was I, is basically what I want to know. But in specifics. Did I look really-really awesome or just kind of good? Wait, wait—I looked prime. Didn’t I, Martin?” “Are you done?” “With my opening questions?” She shook her head. “Wow.” “You don’t have to answer.” “I know I don’t.” She reclined her seat and put her feet up on the dash. I thought the subject was closed because she shut her eyes, but then she said, “It’s not often you meet people who are so persistent.” “How often do you meet people who are War?” She peered at me and gave a little shrug, like you’re really not all that special. Then she closed her eyes again.

Like an exclamation point, the em dash may be used to provide emphasis, but the exclamation point must go at the end of a sentence—the em dash can go anywhere: There’s a little blonde girl—in my bed. None of my porridge—not even one little drop—is left.

There'll be two dates on your tombstone and all your friends will read'em but all that's gonna matter is the little dash between them

That kiss, like a piece of long-awaited punctuation. Not the em dash of an interrupted line, or the ellipsis of a quiet escape, but a period, a closed parenthesis, an end.