The dash is the Kim Kardashian of punctuation marks: misplaced, over-exposed, shamelessly self-promoting, always eager to elbow out her jealous sisters the comma, colon, and semicolon.

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So why not try for a trifecta: a proposal that we restore the undervalued semicolon to its proper place in journalism – ahead of the dash.

Semicolons to link clauses make sentences longer and less readable with nothing to gain except a chance for the writer to show off her knowledge of semicolons. Rude. Dashes, colons and commas have ...

A period or possibly a semicolon would be better. But not everyone agrees with me. News publications usually put a space on either side of an em dash — making it sort of float.

I just finished my poetry thesis last week, and I’m embarrassed to admit the number of times I changed periods to commas, replaced colons with dashes, and struck out semicolons—only to ...

And she has a point. I’ve been guilty myself. But no more. As for the semi-colon, I have to say that I am with Kurt Vonnegut on that one. As he said: ...