DEATH TO DASHES

When you're stuck in an ebook universe of right-margin justification without benefit of hyphenation (Kindle World, as imposed by Amazon), one of the more annoying bits of punctuation is the dash.

For various reasons, I've concluded the type of dash that works best is the en dash. The short one.

Unfortunately, in the corrosive environment of the ebook, the spacing around en dashes can get messed up. There is a particular problem when using a pair of dashes to set off a bit of information inside a sentence. If the dashes are far enough apart to appear on different lines of text, there is an excellent chance the spacing around them will differ—sometimes strikingly.

Never a pretty sight.

Even the use of a single dash inside a paragraph opens the door for noticeably loose spacing, compared to other forms of punctuation. The dash just seems to draw unwanted attention to itself.

Toward the end of the edit of my last book I went through the manuscript (in the HTML version) with a bloody axe, taking out dashes. Later edits restored some of those dashes. (They are a hard habit to kick.) With just hours to go, I went through again (search set for "ndash") and reduced dashes from 86 to 20. (In 95k words.)

Here are some of the techniques I used.

Substitution: swap in a colon.

Colons and dashes are meant to appear in reverse order.

    This statement leads to a list: item, item, item, and item.
Or the dash version:

    Item, item, item, and item – all coming from the same situation.

You may object to simply subbing in a colon for the dash in the previous sentence. It's a question of eye and ear. But often it's a fast change you can get away with.

If you have more time, you could rewrite the sentence, putting the statement first and the list last, with a colon betwixt 'em. Mainly you give up a bit of drama, which is why you're more likely to see the colon in formal writing, where drama is exchanged for clarity and organization.

Another simple substitution: the comma.

Often, little or no revision is needed to use a comma in place of a dash:

    He wanted to know the truth – so I told him.

Becomes:

    He wanted to know the truth, so I told him.

In the first example, the dash is all about the drama. The second sentence is more low key. In an already dramatic situation, the information that the first character ("he") is at last handed the truth is probably enough drama. And a lot of that is created inside the reader's mind, those good folks doing your job for you.

The reader "jumps the gap" in knowledge so quickly it hardly matters how the text puts it, so long as the information is clearly given. The loss in drama switching from dash to comma is negligible—if the situation is setup with the right amount of juice to begin with.

(Blog writing is generally a bit hyper, which is why I can get away with a dash in the previous sentence. Plus, the text is not justified, so there's no visual penalty.)

If drama is still sought from punctuation, go for the full stop:

    He wanted to know the truth. So I told him.

There, an extra dollop of drama, and no dash.

Even more drama:

    He wanted to know the truth.
   So I told him.
Now the drama extends to a new paragraph. This technique also fluffs up the white space on your page, making the scene read just a little faster. Your eye and ear should tell you when you've used this technique too many times in one book.

These examples show how you can kill a dash with the least bit of rewriting. Save all that extra writing for your next book.

(And this time, try to think outside the dash box, so you don't have to keep cleaning up the mess.)

Fixing the paired dash situation can also be done quite simply, though there are consequences.

One solution is again to swap in commas:

    He ran around all day – from one end of this stinking, crowd-addled island to the other – before arriving home in time to watch Game of Thrones.
Becomes:

    He ran around all day, from one end of this stinking, crowd-addled island to the other, before arriving home in time to watch Game of Thrones.

Separating a chunk of text that includes at least one comma is often the main reason for USING a pair of dashes. Taking them out again by throwing in even more commas puts some demands on the reader. It slows the reading a bit, true, but makes it look more grownup, somehow. More serious. More literary.

Now, going another way:

    He ran around all day (from one end of the this stinking, crowd-addled island to the other) before arriving home in time to watch Game of Thrones.
Using parentheses is a risk, and in this case I think the result is slightly off-putting. If I couldn't have dashes, I would prefer the commas.

Other times, however, a parenthetical remark is perfectly acceptable. It tends to lighten the mood, though, releasing some tension. And it's right on the edge of being mistaken for an intrusion from the author.

Here's another example:

    Bob Randall – no question, the stupidest man in the known universe – ran for office in December, a month after the elections were held.

Becomes:

    Bob Randall (no question, the stupidest man in the known universe) ran for office in December, a month after the elections were held.

With commas:

    Bob Randall, no question, the stupidest man in the known universe, ran for office in December, a month after the elections were held.
If the sentence is to forgo dashes, it appears to work better with a parenthetical remark, the comma version coming off positively comma-clotted. If using parentheses is not always a perfect solution, it is a solution that gets the job done.

There is, as I mentioned, a risk using parentheses you don't face with dashes. In a style-heavy third-person chunk of text it needs to be clear all the attitude is coming from the viewpoint character, and none from the author.

Remember, overuse of parentheses leads to a gushy, diary-like effect, and should probably be avoided—unless that's exactly what you're writing. BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, for example, is packed with parenthetical remarks, but they seem at home there.

Of course, when you're writing in the first-person, everything belongs to the character, even if the character is mistaken for the author:

    Bob Randall (no question, the stupidest man I ever met) ran for office in December, a month after the elections were held.

Now, I don't mean to leave you with the impression all dashes need to be removed. They work to great effect in short bits of interrupted dialogue:

    "What the – "

As long as the text is too short to reach the right-side margin in the largest reasonable font, the spacing around the dash will be equal and normal looking. Just remember to use the same sort of spacing on both sides of the dash. Don't mix regular with non-breaking spaces (" " in HTML).

If you ONLY use dashes this way (interrupted dialogue), you might want to experiment with the big guys—one em dashes. Up to you.

But I've found embedding those guys inside sentences leads to problems their smaller brothers don't have to worry about. The dash may stick to the back of the first word, while opening a space in front of the next. Or worse, join up in a three-part unit with large spaces front and back.

And I would not recommend using both en and em dashes in the same book.

Personally, I stick with en dashes, keeping them out of the interior of paragraphs whenever possible. Increasingly, I find it possible to do just that.