I’m a pedant and a stickler—and I’m going to keep using em dashes

Reflecting on my high school in New Zealand, I don’t recall having a particularly strong grammar education in my English classes. In fact, I learned more about English grammar from learning German as an exchange student in Switzerland!

My love for punctuation came more from my love of typography than it did from a love of grammar.

When I ran my agency, I often found myself debating whether to correct my team’s sloppy use of improper apostrophes or quotation marks—or to let it slide. It often felt like nitpicking when it was clear no one (on my team or the client’s) noticed or cared. It always felt wrong to see "…" in a large headline in a beautiful typeface—almost like an insult to the typeface designer.

I’ve learned to be less pedantic about this in others’ work. It feels like a lost art and a losing battle.

As for the em dash, I feel like this is something I inherited from my parents. They were pedants and sticklers—but more for the love of the craft than about simply trying to be right. I miss and appreciate that about them.

I’ve always loved the em dash—without spaces as it’s intended to be used. And not to be confused with an en dash or a hyphen.

It’s a longer pause than a comma, and shorter than a period—almost an afterthought. It’s subtle but neither a comma nor a period fully replaces an em dash.

It mildly annoys me that “polished” writing is becoming a tell of AI—and that some are intentionally dumbing down proper punctuation to appear more “authentic”.

I don’t think that’s going to stop me from using em dashes—even in my texts to my kids.