It is time to revive the compound-dash

Stuff the rules:— I want interesting punctuation.

It is time to revive the compound dash. For some three centuries it was common to pair a dash with commas, semi-colons, and colons: then along came the style guides and the pedantic rule makers of the twentieth century—the literary equivalent of the judging panel at the village-hall cake show, who deem what is clearly the best entry to be inadmissible on the basis that it contains one too many items—and the compound dash went into decline.

This narrowing of the aims and uses of punctuation serves no good: what we gain in systematisation, we lose in variety, style, and expansion. The rules of writing have changed immensely throughout history. The fact that two generations of style guide writers in the early twentieth century decided some things were right and some wrong is no reason for us to agree to their usages. Compound dashes were good enough for Dickens, Melville, Austen, and Brontë;— they should be good enough for you and me.

Let us begin with the use of colons and then move on to colon-dashes, to see what the compound adds that the single cannot achieve. Bernard Shaw gave the best definition of a colon as we use it today. I shall not quote Shaw on semi-colons because, about them, he was deranged. As he was about the dash.

Colons, Shaw said, are needed for abrupt pull-ups. Writing to T.E. Lawrence in 1924, he gave the example:

Luruns was congenitally literary: that is, a liar.

(Luruns is Shaw’s witty, derogatory name for Lawrence.) The colon draws out the implication: the second statement explains or expands the first, going on logically with something that was already there: the seedling emerging from the pod. To put it another way, Shaw said,

…when the second statement is a reaffirmation or illustration of the first, use a colon.

Fowler calls this “delivering the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words.” Quite so.

The colon-dash can go beyond this logical function to provide tone, rhetoric, character, and mood. An example from Jane Eyre.

The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve. The superintendent rose:—

“I have a word to address to the pupils,” said she.

The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it sank at her voice. She went on:—

“You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat: you must be hungry:—I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all.”

Note that as well as introducing speech (which is how Johnson used it, for example) that the final colon-dash here is used to emphasise.¹ In the breakfast comment, the first colon expands on the implication of the clause: it takes an inevitable logical step:—the colon-dash introduces a conclusion. Statement: implication:—response. Or, to use Shaw’s terminology: Statement: reaffirmation:—modification, contradiction, or condition. Serving bread and cheese was not logically inevitable from saying the girls had missed lunch: it goes beyond. The dash is what takes you from the possible implication to the surprise, the pull-up. Delivering goods not invoiced.

Shaw would use a semi-colon here.² I told you he was crackers. Just imagine:

“You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat: you must be hungry; I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all.”

In Shady characters: the secret life of punctuation, symbols, & other typographical marks, Keith Houston says these compound dashes were part of the seventeenth century habit of over punctuating, citing an edition of Othello with lines like:

I’ll tell you what you shall do,—our general’s wife is now the general.

And,

Oh that’s an honest fellow:—do not doubt Cassio.

Good stuff. Elegant, expressive,— brings the speech right off the page.

Despite this, according to the University of Sussex, you never, never, never follow a colon with a dash—shows you what they know. The colon-dash is still used in legislative enacting clauses. Lionel Giles used it in his translation of The Art of War.

The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat:—let such a one be dismissed!

Can you think of a better way to punctuate that clause, to bring out the power, the deliberateness:— the command. Once upon a time, compounded-dashes were everywhere. Look! Here is a compound dash in Dickens:

The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence…

And here is one in Melville:

Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook.

Here is perhaps my favourite example, also Melville:

I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside. “Queequeg,” said I softly through the key-hole:—all silent.

Can you get quite that atmosphere with any other form of punctuation? Would you sacrifice it for the sake of a systmatic rule? Austen used a compound dash in Mr Collins’ dialogue to lovely effect.

You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your refusal of my addresses are merely words of course. My reasons for believing it are briefly these:—It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable.

It really does bring out his self-importance.

Nicholson Baker once tried to use a comma-dash, the more modern sort where the dash precedes the comma, thus—, in a piece for the Atlantic and was prevented. What possible good does this do for the world? In an NYRB essay, Baker quotes some lovely examples of dash compounds in the early twentieth century, showing that rules can exist while the best writers “flout” them. Keynes wrote in 1920:

The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable,—abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.

As Baker asks, Why, why are they gone? There are some in Mason & Dixon (which I am currently enjoying), and The Satanic Verses. But we have lost the use of a diverse and subtle set of marks for a minor benefit of systematisation. Who would you rather agree with? Johnson, Austen, Brontë, Emerson, Eliot (George), Dickens, Keynes, Baker, Pynchon, and Rushdie,— or the arbitrary impositions of The Chicago Manual of Style?

Enough! Enough! Enough of this nonsense;— it is time to revive the compound dash!

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1. See, too, while we are exploding rules, that “which” is used indistinguishably from “that”, with no nonsense about a comma, or partitioning those words depending on subclauses as is often insisted on by rule-makers.

2. Brontë uses a semi-colon to introduce a subordinate clause, something that would get her into trouble with any modern teacher or editor.

…her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present. (p. 52)