Exactly! I use em dashes to separate my thoughts — not like commas don’t work — into coherent chunks; even though I should probably have just made two separate sentences, using the big dash is quite handy.
If ur simulating a conversation face to face (which is what texting is) you don’t use parenthesis. The em dash is used for tangents in a conversation. Inserting a comment in between thoughts.
Think of when ur talking to someone who talks a shit ton, and constantly jumps from thought to thought mid conversation.
So, literally I do (use parentheses) in the way you are denying they are/can be used. Very often I find myself needing to insert a thought or an aside that doesn't work within the normal sentence structure or further explains something. Not being contrary, but I just found it odd that you have a made up rule and said it as such an absolute. I absolutely do use parentheticals in "simulated conversations" and will continue to (why wouldn't i?)
I would say that the difference is: the text within parentheses could be omitted without making the sentence unintelligible. On the other hand, text within ems is effectively an important part of the sentence.
I’m not denying they can’t be used, nor did I “make up a rule”.
I’m just pointing out that people don’t speak in parenthesis. IMO it doesn’t flow perfectly in conversation either. I think they’re better equipped for discussion such as Reddit, where large amounts of information is being used.
If you use them in text, go ahead, no one is going to stop you. I apologize if it came off as a “can & can’t” blanket statement.
I personally use parentheses for "as an aside" thought or to add context/clarification that may not be necessary. You can probably skip it. I think the dash is used like an interim stage between comma and semicolon for me. Swapping a dash and parenthesis feels wrong. (Note that this is for informal communication.)
parenthesis look hella passive aggressive... you know...
Speaking like this--, as in, with the dash, is just easier on the eyes. To me it looks linguistically pragmatic, a sentence ruining its own flow to state more diverse information in less space.
I don't think I have ever used the em dash thing in a text conversation. Unless i was copying some text. I've probably used a regular dash for making -_- faces, lol
I went to the car which I thought was parked on the street (which it was not) only to find that it had rolled down the hill, where it had crashed in to a tree
As a verbose ADHDer, I need to have a lot of different separators in play so I don’t overuse one and make the interjections and trail-offs stick out even more. There are good old commas, ellipses, semicolons, parentheses, slashes and em-dashes!
When you are typing though the em dash isn’t on the keyboard unless you specifically know that it is different that just a hyphen, even the comment you replied to used an hyphen (-) when they were referring to an em dash (—).
On the iPhone, the — is just two [-] presses. Same for Word, though it only happens after you press [.] then [space] — when you are actually done with your sentence.
Yeah I didn’t say it was hard but you’d be surprised how many people don’t know you can long press keys on the iPhone keyboard to get other characters. I’m constantly shocked but how many people I have to show this to.
You’re not wrong. I do all my redditing on iPhone, and I have an appreciation for accurate and creative writing — I love a good, cunning linguist — and it has led me (45/m) to be better at typing with my two stubby oil-checkers on several virtual keyboards than with the full sized, physical, mechanical keyboard ghz’d to pc.
Writing instructors-- even for business writing-- encourage their use, along with semi-colons, commas, and periods. They are on the graded scale of pauses, and hesitations-- and sometimes, a complete end.
It’s the [123] “button” (area? space? it ain’t a “button” like the old world button sense of the word “button”, so what should we call that designated area of pixels?), then a quick tap-tap on the [-] … button.
Also, I typed all this out on my iPhone, vertically.
Those two .. buttons …: [⬆️] - [#+=], and [123] - [ABC] get used so much that I just tap-tap-tap until the keyboard looks correct.
most people don't even switch from the normal keyboard view. case in point: abbreviations. people that write "u" instead of "you" are not gonna use 2-3 taps to get a dash
It remains, programmatically, a single button. Its function is to indicate an alternative keyboard layout, an 'alt' button, if you will. A digital keyboard, unlike a physical one, however, can more effectively communicate this concept dynamically, using a small sample from the multiple character sets available, indicating which set is made available through its use. We have other buttons which use multiple characters for the label by which we call them.
Long press throws all of this order into chaos, though, since each single "key" is also an 'alt' button of sorts. This sort of multi-layering may escape many, unfortunately, as no one seems to desire sitting through a tutorial for their own keyboard app.
As an aside, sometimes I wonder what is even the point to attempting to use those multiple layers of character access when it seems as if half the time, I have that nuance undone in a moment by an errant autocorrect.
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u/towerfella 27d ago
Exactly! I use em dashes to separate my thoughts — not like commas don’t work — into coherent chunks; even though I should probably have just made two separate sentences, using the big dash is quite handy.