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An em-dash is an eminently useful little bit of punctuation. Sadly, it has more or less been consigned to die a slow death by virtue of being omitted from the vast majority of computer keyboards. To type an em-dash on a normal keyboard, you have to hold down the Alt key and press 0151 on the num pad. The row of number keys above the alphabet won’t work—it has to be the num pad. A moment of silence for the poor em-dash ———
Why are em-dashes beautiful things? I don’t really know. It’s just that when you encounter an em-dash—like this—you brain is taken a half step out of sync with the rest of the page, and sometimes, when you’re reading late at night, you catch sight of a thought that was coyly hiding in plain sight. Just as you focus on it though, it smiles and vanishes, leaving only a rapidly vanishing memory.
Semi-colons, apostrophes and various other marks serve as little devices on a page that guide the flow of thought. I never could read Ulysses because of Joyce’s habit of enclosing his characters conversations in em-dashes, rather than with inverted commas. —Yes, Aditya said. He actually did use it like this.
Writing is weird business. Sometimes you think you should write in the style of your favourite writer, other times you feel you should develop your own style, whatever manner of strange purple animal that is. You can write in legalese—in fact, you have to, since I can’t—or in SMS lingo. Who’s to say what’s correct? I’m just up late at night, and, being slightly perturbed by the lack of nothing at all, have decided to drown all my sorrows in this peculiar fashion.
Cate and William went on a trip. On this trip they saw all manner of wondrous beasts, and some strange little men with blue hats who seemed to turn up wherever they went. What made it all the more curious was the fact that the blue-hatted men always seemed the most meek, mild-mannered little milksops that ever ran from a stern waiter after leaving a most munificent tip. No matter where C and W went, there was sure to be a blue-hatted man somewhere in the vicinity—perhaps escaping a wife’s tirade, or maybe meekly trying to tell the officer that no, sir, that was NOT his car that was double-parked.
The little chappies became part of their trip. C and W expected to see them, and made little jokes about them to each other. They would try and catch a couple of the blue hats, just to talk to, nothing else intended, but every time they came close, mysteriously the blue-hats would have melted away through the crowd, or night would fall, or the light would turn from red to green or green to red, or vegetable vendors would come in their way, or little children with red knobbly knees would run around them and trip them up. It was as if the universe had decided to keep the blue-hats away from our lovely couple.
The Lord knows that this would have gone on forever and a day, but even the Universe has off days, and one day, it hiccuped and belched at the same time, and took its eye off the ball (or hat) for a crucial little second, and in the eternity of time, that much was enough for Cate to grab hold of the threadbare little black coat the man was wearing, and say “Excuse me Sir, but may I ask you one question?”
A panic-stricken look and a glance from fathomless yellow eyes—all crinkly like a potato chip—and a mumbled apology were all that Cate got as the man wrenched his coat out of her grasp—leaving a little bit behind—and made good his escape.
Cate stood transfixed, and did not move even when William arrived beside her, puffing and out of breath. It was as if she had seen a ghost, or as she had peeked right beyond the edge of beyond and beheld the awful valley therein.
From that day forth, Cate and William had only one all-consuming goal in their life—find the man in the blue hat. Four hundred years and more they have spent on this quest, neatly forgetting to die in the interim. Don’t envy them their immortality, however. They don’t even notice it.