Tee shirts and punctuation

If you know me, then you know I have an astounding collection of nerdy/sarcastic tee shirts. Mostly short sleeve, but some long, so today, as it's "casual Friday," there should be no surprise anywhere for anyone I'm wearing one of my stellar assortment. (And before you say, hey, there's a lot of ego there, let's just say, one must fake it 'til they make it, and these shirts help.) Today's offering:

Em-dash energy-- Oxford comma values.

And I can pretty much guarantee that NO one will know what it means. And that it pretty much sums up the contradictions (complexity?) that is me. Whitman would approve: "I contain multitudes." It galls me that one of the so-called "tells" that people use to assert that something is AI-generated is the use of em-dashes. Dang it all. I love those. And I use them. 

My brain likes to interrupt itself, and when I'm writing -- and speaking, but you can't see them if it's a spoken sentence-- I interrupt my own thoughts with frightening regularity. Think of them as an excited and excitable speaker's way of waving her hands and saying, "O, and before I forget...." (Yes, I use ellipses with wild abandon, too.) 

So, either I'll be explaining my shirt all day, or people will --which is more likely-- just ignore it, because by now everyone just assumes I'm some odd duck that quacks in meter or something like that. 

Punctuation matters! It's not just conventional, it's intentional. Especially if you want to control how the reader is experiencing what you write. Your message is made so much more clear when it's not all hurly-burly, a free-for-all that ends in fender-benders. (And those are n-dashes, in case you wanted that clarified.) 

Why are they called m-dashes and n-dashes? Blame (or praise) your printer. An m-dash is the width of the letter m and the n-dash is the width of the letter n. And dash --or hyphen-- using them judiciously is wise. 

Okay, that's enough nerdy stuff about dashes. And Oxford commas matter, too. I cling to them like a lifeboat in the murky swirl of random listing. One must use them in order to be clear, as I said. Think:

I like toast, juice and eggs.

I like toast, juice, and eggs. 

Who in heaven wants eggs swimming in juice? Because to put them together without the necessary separation of the comma is to allow for a mess, both literally and syntactically. The only time I don't use one is when the last two items always go together like peanut butter and jelly. 

So, there we are. I hope --and pray-- you have a lovely, warm, and joyous day. 

Happy Friday,

C

Next up: a discussion about the interrobang. Hm...