Jamel Brinkley, from “No More Than a Bubble” in A Lucky Man Here are some beautiful em dash examples from literature.Įach of the names had three letters-SER, EVE, RON, REL, MED-and the drips of paint made murky icicles of color. However, even when tasked with its regular occupations-that is, sandwiching text within a sentence as an aside, adding a parenthetical of sorts, or showing a cutting off of speech-the em dash opens up countless, dazzling possibilities for constructing sentences. (Passions have always run high when it comes to punctuation issues, it would seem.) Emily Dickinson used it as a kind of dividing mark in her poetry. James Joyce used it to set off dialogue because he had a particular antipathy for quotation marks. It’s pretty much agreed that there’s not really a wrong way to use an em dash-or rather, most ways in which people are naturally inclined to use it are acceptable. Some authors have employed the em dash non-traditionally to their own tastes.

So there’s no better way to celebrate this fabulous mark than by looking at how writers have used it to enhance their crafts. And of course, some of the best em dash examples exist in the world of literature. Em dashes may be prone to overuse, but if you understand how beautiful the em dash can be, you won’t want to overuse it. The em dash, aka possibly the most adaptable and intuitive punctuation mark there is, gets a lot of love-and the occasional bit of hate.

Em dash persona poems