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Why not use an em dash? "To my mother—Ayn Rand—and God." Is this flat out wrong?
by theseatoms 10y ago
Why not use an em dash?
"To my mother—Ayn Rand—and God."
Is this flat out wrong?
- rayiner 10y agoHouse style where I work (legal industry) is to set off appositive phrases with em dashes, and to use commas and semi-colons to indicate lists.
- leephillips 10y ago"set off appositive phrases with em dashes" That is not English. Simple as that.
- throwanem 10y agoIt is absolutely English—stylistic English—and while you may not appreciate the choice of style, it is just that—a choice—which may be made or not made without need of accusations that the result you don't prefer is "not English".
- oddlyaromatic 10y agoThis is what I would do if I had to, but the real problem here is that we are trying to represent something that sounds fine when spoken aloud. It doesn't work as well in written form because if all the ambiguities pointed out above. So the better writer changes the sentence itself to read more fluently and not force the reader to parse something that is grammatically correct but ultimately clumsy. Maybe it needs to become two sentences to be clear, and that's ok.