Just Call Me--Dash!!!

As I read over the syllabi for my two courses last year (the basis for this self-assessment), I wasn't surprised to find that I use dashes and parentheses—a lot. What I didn't realize was how much I use these marks—e.g., 18 dashes in each syllabus for a total of 36 dashes in just 5 pages of text! I also saw excessive use of parentheses and virgule (the slash mark) as well as the use of all caps for emphasis.

Checking The Writer's Sourcebook, I see these rules apply:

62d on dashes, pp. 468-469, which oddly enough point out that dashes can be used for less important information or for added emphasis

62e, pp. 469-470, parentheses for setting off unimportant information;

62h, pp. 473-474, slashes for showing optional wording—with no spaces before or after the slash mark, which I don't always do when it's hard to read.

p. 479 using all caps in e-mail: a no-no, according to THE BOOK. Instead, use asterisks.

"Emphasis" seems to be the reason I'm overusing all these marks, but something more is going on now. In the past I was able to achieve emphasis with structure and diction and the like. But now I'm achieving emphasis through these heavily marked, topographically ways. Why? Digging deeper, I think it is because I do so much writing online—email most often but also in blogs—and the medium and these genres are heavily voiced. Certainly they have more voice than does academic writing, the other major kind of writing I do.

Writing online might also account for the other trends I see in my writing: parentheses and virgules. The parentheses aren't really for emphasis. Just the opposite. They are like asides (like you see in Shakespeare, when characters whisper something to the audience). But, again, something more seems to be going on here, and once again I think that something is the Internet. I embed a helluva lot of information in a single sentence, and I put in a lot of parentheticals (by way of the parentheses or dashes—which is how I'm using dashes) to get it in, like hypertext links. Look at how much I pack into this sentence (which the grammar checker flagged as too long):

"At the same time, we must recognize that resources are limited in real classrooms; thus, we will be (re)building our units based on the number-one selling textbook series in the state, The Language of Literature—keeping in mind that simply teaching the text, or simply "teaching to the test," will never give students what they need to be truly literate, critically engaged citizens, consumers, and appreciators of the wor(l)d."

Yeah, it's long. But I like it. And it's correctly punctuated. So I beg to differ with the grammar checker, which I rarely find helpful.

Notice too that I use parentheses to say and mean two words at the same time: "(re)building" and "wor(l)d." Another sign that I'm wanting to pack in more information in a less linear way. The same goes the virgule/slash mark .

Why am I so obsessed with voice and modulation and packing it in? Perhaps because academic prose, which I read and write a lot of these days, is so unvoiced, so monochromatic, so technical and precise.

My goals in this stage of my development as a writer, then, are not just to watch my overuse of dashes, parentheses, virgules, and all caps/italics. Rather, I'm going to try to get more voice into my academic writing. If I can express myself and create more voice in my academic work, I think I won't overdo it so much for other audiences.