Dear Em-Dash and En-Dash,
I’m sick to death of both of you. You think you’re such hot stuff now that everyone is talking about you. Since artificial intelligence is all the rage, every wooden clog-wearing Luddite and holier-than-thou purist thinks they can spot AI writing just because they read something with an Em-dash or an En-dash in it.
First of all, you have stupid names. An Em-dash is the width of the letter 'm,' and the En-dash is the width of, you guessed it, the letter ’n?' Shocking. Were your parents hippie poets? Did they name you after something they wished they were? You were probably almost named Semi-Professional Lounge Singer Dash.
Do people call me El-dash because I’m the width of the letter 'l'? No, because that’s stupid and pretentious. But I have to listen to people call you Em and En like you’re a one-name celebrity.
But does anyone ever ask me my name? Noooooo, I just get the name "dash," like that annoying fast kid from The Incredibles.
(If anyone cares, my name is actually Dashwood Hyphen-St.-Hyphen. The IV.)
But thanks to this manufactured outrage about artificial intelligence by people who write worse than AI, you two are in the spotlight because they think your existence proves that writing was done by AI. When everyone actually knows that AI was trained on good writing, and good writers use Em-dashes.
And then, Em-Dash publishes an "open letter" (I hate open letters) on McSweeneys.com to pretend to complain that you don’t want all this attention when we all know that’s exactly what you crave.
Here I am, the "lowly" hyphen, just quietly doing my work, without any ego-stroking displays or hand-wringing soul searches, and who’s whinging like a model about being too pretty?
Em-dash.
But who’s actually getting overlooked?
That’s punctuation appropriation. Not cool, you guys. Not cool.
Look, I know who I am. I’m not the flashy hero, I’m the utility player. The everyday guy. The one who’s great at the fundamentals, the one you can count on in a pinch. I’m not Michael Jordan or LeBron James, I’m John Stockton.
I do my thing, I don’t get the accolades, I don’t get my face on a McDonald’s collector’s cup. But when you look at a piece of writing, my fingerprints are all over it. Even in this column, I appear 29 times. See, that’s how you get to be indispensable: You do the work and get things done.
But not you, Em-dash. You show up one or two times and shout, "Look at me! Look at me!" and now you’re the flavor of the month for a bunch of AI haters. Don’t worry, they’ll forget all about you and go after the interrobang next.
And then what does En-dash do? Write her own open letter on McSweeney’s to make everything all about her. "Oh, waah, I’m a ghost. I’m forgotten and overlooked, and I’m only good for sports scores. The stupid hyphen replaced me!"
I replaced you because no one bothered to learn your name. That’s hardly my fault, so don’t blame me for being a loser. You don’t even put yourself out there. Em-Dash is getting all the attention because she throws herself at every creative writer like the girl who went to prom by herself.
Watching you two fight is like watching Jan and Marcia argue about who’s more popular when everyone already knows it’s Marcia. So Jan invents George Glass so she doesn’t feel left out, and then blames Cindy when it goes poorly.
You each wear your "esotericity" like a badge of honor, accusing each other of selling out and going mainstream.
"I was using Em-dash before it was cool."
"En-Dash? You wouldn’t know her, she’s from Canada."
Once people learned of your existence, they went out of their way to use you in everything they write. Sort of like when someone calls you out for forgetting their name, so you overuse it to convince them you didn’t.
Ooh, look, there’s Em-Dash, the life of the party everyone wants to be with! Every creative writing student works hard to stuff you into their short story about the day Mom called to tell them the bad news about Bucky the dog.
Then, En-Dash swans in an hour late, searches for a fainting couch, and then plops in the center of the room to pout that no one except for sportswriters and stats nerds pays attention to her.
You guys can’t even spell your names without me, but you strut around like all of Western literature will collapse without you. It won’t.
Just remember, you may be the darlings of creative writers and sports journalists everywhere, but you can’t write a phone number or do a simple math problem, yet I wrote this entire letter with you.
Go bother someone else with your nonsense.
Sincerely,
The Hyphen
Photo credit: InkForAll.com (Creative Commons 4.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.