Academic

The Em-Dash Controversy

By John Inazu

Over the past few weeks, I?ve raised some questions about conservative notions of religious patriotism, liberal notions of equality, and empirical approaches to legal scholarship.  Now I?d like to write about something controversial.  

I recently learned that Robert Bringhurst?s The Elements of Typographic Style instructs that we should ?[u]se spaced en dashes ? rather than close-set em dashes or spaced hyphens ? to set off phrases.?  Bringhurst then adds this devastating indictment:

The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.

Ouch.  Just to be sure the stakes are clear:

The en dash that Bringhurst endorses separates phrases using a single dash (slightly longer than a hyphen) with spaces on either side ? like this.

The em dash uses a longer dash and no spaces?like this.

I have long employed the em dash and am struggling with the news that it is even more outdated than my love of eighties music.

I raise the em dash controversy playfully, of course, but I wonder whether it gestures toward a more serious issue.  Writing style?even stylistic quirks that have nothing to do with content?can create impressions about competence.  Like many others, I experienced this in legal practice and while clerking?nothing reduced the appearance of credibility faster than a poorly written brief laced with grammatical or spelling mistakes.  (I am among the guilty?I?m quite certain that I have yet to master the technical differences between ?who? and ?whom? or ?that? and ?which?). 

The reality that presentation as well as substance matters in our formal and informal communications is worth reinforcing with our students.  I sometimes worry that my own writing quirks will predominate in unhelpful ways in my course expectations about written communications (whether informal emails or formal assignments).  But in this respect?an emphasis on the teacher?s quirks?the classroom shares an important similarity with legal practice.  Many of the students we train will begin their legal careers writing drafts for somebody else?a judge, a partner, a government supervisor.  They will learn to adopt their style and presentation to their boss?s preferences.  That is part of being a good lawyer?knowing how to tailor tone, style, and presentation to one?s audience.  And it is something that we can reasonably ask of our students while they are still in the relative safety of a learning environment?although I'll probably let the em dash slide.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on July 14, 2010 (boomark / email).