The Dash

Use two hyphens to form a dash—also called an m dash—with no spaces between the hyphens.

A hyphen (used to form compound words) is not a dash

Use a dash to make a parenthetical statement while avoiding the formality of parentheses:

Pork chops—I want them, I need them, I’ve got to eat them—have bloated my hips into baby Titanics.

Dominika stood at the top of the staircase dressed in a bizarre costume—get this, she wore pink lip gloss and a Roman gladiator helmet—surveying the waltzing couples below.

To emphasize writing that would otherwise be in parentheses.

What happened in the bedroom last night—from our first sloppy kiss to our last slice of birthday cake—I blame on the stock market, the rainstorm, and my boyfriend, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky.

After we spoke by phone and made arrangements to meet at McDonalds, I was so thrilled by the pigment of her skin–the color of coffee with too much half-and-half—that I almost fainted near the ketchups and straws.

To introduce appositives that contain commas.

When I drink American corn whiskey—Catdaddy, Mountain Moonshine, Old Gristmill, Virginia Lightening, Dixie Dew—I don’t for a second consider diluting it with any goddamned soda or water or Coca Cola.

To prepare a list, statement or a dramatic shift in tone

If you want to use food to seduce a man,  cook with lots of pork—Alsatian ham and sauerkraut, ham and potato soup, pork stroganoff, bacon-wrapped venison.

Fix:

1. His mental illness was impervious to every medication his doctor prescribed, Lamictal, Prozac, lithium, klonopin, and we continued to live under the tyranny of his depression.

2. I have worked hard to develop every muscle in my body, my deltoids, my triceps, my quads, my trapezius, my abdominals, and still, in a pair of Speedos, I look like a 98-pound weakling.

3. Believe it or not, some very nice people use Heroin, you’d be surprised how nice some of them are, and become addicts and die.

4. Trembling with delight, I define delight as a thrill that starts midway down the gluteus maximii and travels laser-like up the back to the neck, engulfing, like a tsunami, the mouth, I took her, brown, work-worn hands, leaned across her wine glass and kissed her bee-stung lips.