Skip to content

Which is Correct? — or – ?

2024-09-03 · explainer · John · 3:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing · mode: Explainer · tags: self correction

Having finished what is hopefully the last big edit of his tuberculosis book, John explains his love of dashes: the em dash in place of colons, semicolons and parentheses and as a breath or aside, and the rarer en dash for ranges and attributive compounds, holding that punctuation serves clarity of expression rather than rules.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; last big edit of the tuberculosis book; John's love of dashes; dashes postdate printing

  • ★★ John has just completed what is hopefully the last big edit of his book about tuberculosis, which reminded him how much a dash contains. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · Everything Is Tuberculosis
  • ★★ John loves dashes (hyphens, en dashes and em dashes), though not as much as Emily Dickinson loved them. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says dashes didn't really exist before printing. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — The em dash: its uses, John's preference, authorship software, his 313 em dashes, Jonathan Swift's mockery

  • ★★★ John explains there are two major dashes, em and en; the em dash can replace a colon, semicolon or parenthesis, serve poetry as for Emily Dickinson, or mark interruptions as Shakespeare's printers used it. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ In an example sentence from his tuberculosis book, John says tuberculosis, curable for nearly a century, still kills over 1.3 million people per year. — 00:00:29 · tuberculosis, Everything Is Tuberculosis
  • ★★ John is not afraid of colons or parenthetical asides, but thinks em dashes often look and work better, a personal preference. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says preferences for em dashes or parentheses are one way software identifies the authors of anonymously published texts. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John is highly inclined toward em dashes: by last count his most recent manuscript contained 313 of them. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says an em dash can accomplish so much: it's a breath, a change of pace, an aside. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says Jonathan Swift made fun of em dashes in the 18th century, writing that in modern wit printed trash is set off with numerous breaks and dashes. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — The en dash: ranges, from-to phrases (with an AFC Wimbledon aside), attributive compounds

  • ★★ John says the rarer en dash is longer than a hyphen but half the length of an em dash, used only in specific cases such as ranges like 2022 to 2024. — 00:01:56

  • ★★★ John says most people use hyphens for ranges, which is fine: language exists not to oppress us but to promote clarity of expression. — 00:01:56

    “Language doesn't exist to oppress us. It exists to promote the clarity of expression.”

  • ★ John uses an en dash for ranges anyway, simply because he loves an en dash. (playful) — 00:02:26

  • ★★ John says en dashes are technically also used in other from-to phrases, such as a New York to London flight. — 00:02:26 · New York City, London
  • ★ John playfully tells London visitors to go to an AFC Wimbledon game, calling the Tate Modern's 20th and 21st century art boring. (playful) — 00:02:26 · AFC Wimbledon, London
  • ★★ John doesn't think en dashes are needed in ranges like 20th to 21st century, but thinks they make sense in attributive compounds. — 00:02:53
  • ★★ John's example: with a hyphen, New York style pizza could suggest something new about York style pizza; an en dash shows it is a multi-word phrase. — 00:02:53 · New York City
  • ★★ John's second example: war era rationing takes a hyphen, but civil war era rationing takes an en dash, lest the rationing seem somehow civil. (playful) — 00:02:53

00:03:22 — The joy of grammar's weeds and of choices that serve clarity; em dash sign-off joke

  • ★★ John admits they are getting into the weeds but loves it: the weeds of grammar are where he is happiest. — 00:03:22
  • ★★★ John loves that in writing every single choice can either facilitate the clarity of expression or complicate it. — 00:03:22

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says a previous version of the video was wrong about how attributive compounds work and apologizes for the en dash-related catastrophe. — video description
  • ★★ In a channel comment, John says he has been livestreaming FIFA and other shenanigans to raise money for AFC Wimbledon's playing budget, hoping to fund a new player in January. — creator comment · AFC Wimbledon

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: dash · em dash · en dash

Also: People: Emily Dickinson · Jonathan Swift · William Shakespeare

Works: Everything Is Tuberculosis

Organizations: AFC Wimbledon · Tate Modern

Concepts: compound modifier · hyphen · linguistic prescription · stylometry · tuberculosis

Places: London · New York City

Only in the description or credits: FIFA (video game series) · John's Channel

← Previous: The Two Coolest Things we Know About Sharks · Next → I feel like I can't talk about this…