Ode to Em-dash
I’ll cut to the chase: you’re probably using em-dashes wrong1—if you’re using them at all. I’ll use them in almost everything I write. Em-dashes convey an abrupt change in thought in a subtler and more expressive way than a colon. Take a look at the first sentence; I use a colon to force an abrupt idea on the reader, and close the sentence off with a new thought placed in that deserved a spot in the sentence with an em-dash.
Crafting the em-dash seems to be a problem. I’ll give that there doesn’t seem to be a defined standard, but the consensus does seem to sway in the direction I’m about to present. The em-dash (“—”) gets its name because it is the width of the letter “m”, known more commonly as one “em”. Unlike an en-dash (“–”), which is used mainly for ranges2(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_dash#En_dash “En-dash @ Wikipedia”)], the em-dash has only one use. If setting the standard were up to me, the em-dash would be set closed between words—like so—and neither open nor replaced by an open en-dash3. There are quite a few long-standing style guides that maintain this is the proper way. There’s a problem though: what do you do with a limited character set, say, ASCII? LaTeX users would argue that “‐‐‐” (triple hyphen-minus) is the correct way, but I’d stick with just two: “‐‐”.
So please, bring back the em-dash. Use it to craft your sentences to be a bit more sophisticated—‘cause parentheses suck.