The Grammar Grouch

Dashes

OK, you hapless nincompoops attending what may as well be called Portland State Clown College—seriously, most of you’d do better to stop chasing a degree you won’t use and learn how to make balloon animals or ride a tiny tricycle.

In fact, I’m sticking with that theme. Henceforth, you sorry excuses for students are the PSCC Bozos. Until you up your grammar game, you’re a Bozo and your grammar makes me want to weep…or just hit your sorry ass with a punctuation guide (maybe that’ll work better for you than reading one).

There are three dashes used in English punctuation, each with a particular purpose. Now, I salute those few hundred students who read this column for laughs instead of lessons—all 500 of you, among tens of thousands of Bozos. Since most of you tapioca-brained imbeciles are saying “whuuut?” right about now, let me break it down in bite-sized pieces (since I know you toddlers can’t handle anything bigger at one time).

This ( — ) is an em dash. It gets used when you want to put emphasis on something in the middle of a sentence, or when you want to include a list and keep it separate from your main point. It’s also used before a citation.

This ( – ) is an en dash. It gets used in numerical ranges. There are other uses, but I don’t want to overload the Bozos.

This ( – ) is a hyphen, which isn’t technically a dash, but I’ll keep it simple for the Bozos. It gets used to join modifiers when they precede a noun. Bozos, if you don’t know what that means, you’re beyond my help. Just drop out. Now.

Moving forward, get your dash use right and there will be less red pen on your papers. Keep tuning in Bozos, and you may someday be handed a graded paper with no corrective marks at all!