A Dash of Style (13 page)

I went to the garden with the aim of uprooting that tree (the one near my window) but got distracted by the ringing phone and picked it up to realize—of all people —it was my grandmother

who I hadn't talked to in years and who told me that she was relocating to Florida (where she was born) which was the last thing I wanted to hear.

In this extreme example we feel as if we're witnessing the narrator's thoughts unfolding as they hit the keys. Few marks facilitate this as well as dashes and parentheses. Creatively, there are times when such a style may be called for, for example, when capturing the voice of a character who thinks in such a way, or to mimic a diary entry.

"There are only two books on earth that end with a double dash. First Laurence Sterne's
A Sentimental Journey,
published in 1766. Then, in honor of that mark. travel writer Jonathan Raban plays homage to Sterne by ending his book about sailing around England.
Coasting.
with a double dash."

— phyllis moore,
author of A
Compendium
of
Skirts

• Along these lines, dashes and parentheses can be used to help create a feeling of intimacy between you and the reader. These two marks create informality, create the illusion of your having dropped all pretense, and thus allow a reader to feel as if he's peeking into your private world. (Of course, the irony is that this sort of writing is even more calculated, to make it look spontaneous.) A work filled with dashes and parentheses will feel more intimate, perhaps even less intimidating. For example:

I ran into this guy—you know the type—who was all swagger and voice, filling the room with his obnoxious stories (they really were dreadful) and laughing at his own jokes until we'd all had enough.

Keep in mind, though, that intimacy is not one and the same with stream of consciousness; they often come hand in hand, but not necessarily so.

When establishing a narrative voice and style, you have to ask yourself whether you want to embrace the reader or keep him at arm's length. Both are effective; it depends on your intention. If the former, then dashes and parentheses can help you achieve your goal.

• Dashes and parentheses can help spice up one-dimensional writing. There may be places in your work where your writing is too dry, straightforward. It's inevitable to fall into this trap, given that a book can span several hundred pages. It could happen in a place where you're in a rush to convey facts, or where you hastily describe a setting or character you feel is insignificant. In such a case, dashes or parentheses can come to the rescue, not in and of themselves, but as mediums through which to add asides, tangents, and clarifications to lend the writing more depth and make it multidimensional. Consider:

He wanted to be a landscaper. My son, a landscaper. After four years of university and a hundred-thousand-dollar bill.

The writing here is not particularly complex. It's not witty or ironic, for example, and lacks a feeling of style and originality. But by incorporating a few dashes and parentheses, we open a gateway to another world:

He wanted to be a landscaper (of all things). My son—a Winston—a landscaper. After four years of university (and a good one at that) and a hundred-thousand-dollar bill.

This could be too stylistic for some reader's taste, too overdone, yet nonetheless, you see the difference in effect. Now there's a strong point of view, a running commentary. The writing feels more personal, more alive. Of course, what ultimately matters is the content between those dashes and parentheses, but none of it would be possible without those marks as a starting point.

There are some functions better suited for the dash than for parentheses. When it does not come in pairs, the dash is a loner, working on its own. It's also more casual than parentheses, less formal, and more flexible. Let's look specifically at some ways these two marks differ:

• A solo dash can be used to slam a sentence to a stop and change its direction. While parentheses can also effect a change of direction, their very nature (opening and closing parentheses) force them to return to the content at hand. The solo dash, though, has no such obligation. It can change a sentence without remorse, and keep on going. Consider:

I have to tell Dad that Mary called —did I leave my coat in the hallway?

The Civil War was fought with tens of thousands of soldiers — which reminds me, I need to schedule that trip to West Point.

The latter and former halves of the sentence are not connected, nor do they have to be. This is partly why the dash has gained such a bad reputation for "sloppiness." But such a technique could be used creatively, for example, to indicate the viewpoint of a character who is chaotic or scattered, who changes thoughts midsentence without returning to the original point.

• The solo dash can be used to indicate interruption, particularly in dialogue. Nothing can capture interruption in dialogue as well, and this alone makes its existence worthwhile. Many writers mistakenly indicate interruption with points of ellipsis, like this:

"We can't tolerate your work here . . ."

"If you're going to fire me, Fred, just get it over with."

This is incorrect. Ellipsis points indicate a trailing off, while a dash indicates a harsh break. This is an important distinction. It should really read like this:

"We can't tolerate your work here—"

"If you're going to fire me, Fred, just get it over with."

The beauty of this is that you can use it whenever you need to in dialogue —rarely will it feel overused.

The above was a basic example. For a more sophisticated usage, author Ellen Cooney offers a fine example of a use of the dash in literature, from Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein:

"What a place is this that you inhabit, my son!" said he, looking mournfully at the barred windows and wretched appearance of the room. "You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you. And poor Clerval —"

The name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too great to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears.

This example is unusual in that the dialogue is interrupted by action—the narrator's "shedding tears." The abrupt ending of dialogue, indicated by the dash, suggests that the person stops speaking as the result of the other's tears. Nothing more need be said: the dash does it all.

• The solo dash can also be used in dialogue to indicate hesitant, incoherent, or stumbling speech. For example:

"If you don't mind, sir—excuse me for bothering you—you see I was just in the area —I thought you wouldn't—I had something to ask you and didn't know when —I hope this is a good time."

Parentheses, for their part, can perform some functions that the dash cannot:

• It is possible to enclose an entire, complete sentence with a pair of parentheses, something that cannot be done with a pair of dashes. Such a sentence could stand on its own, for instance in the midst of a paragraph, as a parenthetical aside to the sentence that preceded it. Of course, this parenthetical aside must be so complete that it merits its own sentence, a fairly unusual circumstance. As in:

I'm on a strictly vegetarian diet. (Well, not strictly, I do eat fish from time to time.) The doctor says it will do wonders for my heart.

The aside is a complete thought, so it cannot fit in the midst of a sentence. Thus it is given its own sentence, made possible by parentheses.

Let's look at how dashes and parentheses were used by the masters. In
Notes from Underground,
Dostoyevsky used parentheses to establish a strong narrative style, and to break down the barrier between writer and reader:

However, if irritated with all this idle talk (and I feel that you are irritated), you were to ask me who I really am, then I should reply, I'm a retired civil servant of humble rank, a collegiate assessor.

Dostoyevsky uses parentheses to interject personal asides, aimed directly at the reader, calling attention to the writing itself and to the writing process. Via a set of parentheses, he's created a feeling of intimacy, made the voice feel less formal, more spontaneous, and somehow more genuine. (Keep in mind, though, as we mentioned earlier, different translators can offer different versions of punctuation, so one cannot necessarily credit Dostoyevsky, who wrote in Russian, with the punctuation. Nonetheless, the intent of his prose shines through.)

John Edgar Wideman uses parentheses masterfully in his story "Fever":

When they cut him open, the one who decided to stay, to be a beacon and steadfast, they will find: liver (1720 grams), spleen (150 grams), right kidney (190 grams), left kidney (180 grams), brain (1450 grams), heart (380 grams), and right next to his heart, the miniature hand of a child, frozen in a grasping gesture, fingers like hard tongues of flame, still reaching for the marvel of the beating heart, fascinated still, though the heart is cold, beats not, the hand as curious about this infinite stillness as it was about thump and heat and quickness.

What a powerful usage. On the surface, he seems to use parentheses to usher in mundane, technical information, but by using them this way, by reducing the vital organs to mere calculating weight measurements, he shows that they are anything but, and that we are dealing with a human being.

Joseph Conrad used the dash skillfully and abundantly. Take a

close look at
Heart of Darkness
and you'll see that it is built on dashes. A superior example from that work:

Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me—still knitting with downcast eyes—and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up.

The strangeness of the image of these women knitting black wool in an empty building in the middle of a jungle —and additionally not stopping for anything—is brought to life by these two dashes. By using dashes to show the woman knitting as she walked, we can feel the narrator's surprise. The fact that she's still knitting actually belongs in its own sentence, but it is interjected into the middle of this sentence, just as the activity continues in the midst of her walking. The punctuation reflects the action. Indeed, this image reflects the entire book, one where people continue their civilized, futile actions in the midst of primitive surroundings.

"One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis."

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

DANGER OF OVERUSE AND MISUSE

Dashes and parentheses are so conspicuous that any misuse will be spotted immediately. As with the colon, when these marks are absent, the reader won't mind; but when they are abundant, they

can be intrusive in the extreme. The problems that come with these marks are diverse and many. Let's consider each in depth:

• Most obtrusive is the blatant overuse of these marks. Occasionally one will encounter the writer who is parenthetically obsessed, who uses the dash like a sword, slashing his way through every sentence. This alone can ruin a text. Consider:

The emigration of Native Americans (as they are now called) was (to some extent) prodded by the arrival of the colonialists (the ones that survived), yet also a result of (according to those who witnessed it) a need for space.

Whenever you use parentheses you ask the reader to put a thought aside while you digress. It's like putting a caller on hold. Do it once, and they will tolerate it. Maybe even twice. But if you do it many times, they will likely get annoyed and hang up.

• Overly long clauses within dashes or parentheses are a common problem. When dashes or parentheses are used as a means to this end, the marks will detract too substantially from the main point, and risk the reader's not being able to get back on track. It's like putting someone on hold for ten minutes, then picking up, continuing midsentence, and expecting them to remember where you left off. For example:

She showed up ten minutes late, wearing her black dress (the one she bought at Macy's with half her life's savings, the one we argued over endlessly and which she returned three times) and ringing my bell too long.

The main point is overwhelmed by the aside. An aside must be just that—an aside. It's hard enough to make a single point and keep it. If an aside must really be so substantial, then it needs its own sentence. Otherwise, you lose the intention of the sentence. Here, for example, the intention was to indicate that she "showed up late" and "rang the bell too long." But the sentence ended up being consumed by her dress.

• One of the easiest ways to grasp how to use the dash is to compare it to a punctuation mark with which it is commonly mistaken: the colon. The dash and colon share similar functions in that they both serve to offset a point. Yet there is a major difference between them. A colon signifies that the text that follows will be intrinsically related to the text that preceded it, for instance a culmination. A dash, though, can strike at any point in a sentence, and the text that follows needn't at all be related to what preceded it—indeed, a dash is more likely to herald a break in thought, an interruption, or aside. For example, you could write: