Single Em Dash to Show a Change of Tone
You can also use an em dash to indicate an abrupt, on-the-fly change in the way a speaker is saying something.
Here, it shows a clock tick's worth of a break followed by a quick change
of tone:
“Let's see, I shut the doors, checked the windows, and—damn,
I just remembered! I didn't lock the kitchen door to the garage!”
Single
Em Dash to Show Interruption
A single em dash can also be used to
indicate an abrupt end to speech through interruption. The interruption can be
self-induced:
Lance was sure Pritchett knew where Nora was. He had to
know. He walked across to where Pritchett was seated and stood over
him.
“Where's Nor—” The rest of the word froze in his throat as he saw Pritchett bring up an ugly-looking knife into the space between them.
“Where's Nor—” The rest of the word froze in his throat as he saw Pritchett bring up an ugly-looking knife into the space between them.
The speaker can be interrupted by someone
else:
“Oh, sure, and did Grayson explain how a salt water creature
happened to be thirty miles inland living in clear water?”
“Stranger things have happened. I know—”
“Look here, Ben,” the sheriff broke in, “you work for the state. Now, why don't you keep your nose out of county business, is that clear enough for you?”
“Stranger things have happened. I know—”
“Look here, Ben,” the sheriff broke in, “you work for the state. Now, why don't you keep your nose out of county business, is that clear enough for you?”
Em Dash Pair to Set Off an Internal Part of Dialogue
You
can use a pair of em dashes to set off an internal part of the dialogue from
what's around it, presumably with abrupt, momentary pauses:
“I
didn't know where he was—nobody did—so I went to see the lawyer without
him.”
Em Dash Pair to Imbed Narrative Inside Dialogue
You can
imbed some descriptive narrative inside dialogue to inform your reader of a
change in the way the dialogue is being spoken as it happens, on the fly; you do
this by placing your dashes outside the dialogue. Example: a person is
talking with another about, let's say, a lost cat. At midpoint in the sentence
the speaker becomes agitated and speaks the rest of the line of dialogue in a
louder, more excited tone. The speech isn't interrupted or paused at any time;
it just gets louder and more excited as the speaker realizes how serious the
situation is. So, how do you represent that seamless change of tone in your
punctuation? You place the dashes outside the dialogue at the point where you
want to indicate the speaker's change in tone; place a closing quote mark where
you want to insert the descriptive narrative, then a dash, then the descriptive
narrative (don't capitalize the first word of this), then another dash, and
finally a new opening quote mark to indicate the continuing
dialogue.
“Tabby's been gone for an hour now. What if he wandered”—her
voice turned suddenly higher and more anxious—“out onto the highway?”
See? You're enclosing your little bit of narrative inside a pair of em
dashes, then imbedding it into the dialogue. It's important to know how to do this
right if you want to use this sort of “stage directions”-inside-dialogue
technique. An awful lot of writers get this wrong.
Here's another
example, this one showing a simultaneous action executed as dialogue is being
spoken. By imbedding it into the dialogue, you can include the simultaneously
occurring action without having to interrupt the flow of the dialogue, even
momentarily:
Imbed this
”—he squirted her forehead with the water
gun—“
into this
“I think maturity is highly overrated.”
and
you get
“I think maturity”—he squirted her forehead
with the water gun—“is highly overrated.”
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Next week in my month-long series on punctuation, we'll look at the most misunderstood of all marks; we'll check out the semicolon.