Ten Most Common Errors Made by Writers: #4

From the Editor’s Eye
The 10 Most Common Errors Made by Writers
(And How to Fix Them)

The seventh of a ten-part series.

#4. Dash It All! Part B: Em Dash—The Separator

The em dash serves an entirely different function than the hyphen and en dash, which I described in the previous blog. Where the hyphen and en dash are used to join text, the em dash is used to separate text. It can be used in place of commas (or parentheses) to enhance readability—or for emphasis—by setting off a word or phra...