The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum:

I didn’t think anyone overused clauses set off by dashes — like this one — as much as I did, but in his latest column Joe Klein manages to use four in five consecutive sentences. That’s impressive. It’s going to be hard — though not impossible — for me to top that.

For the record, my blog address is
http://noisyvoicedofreason.blogspot.com/.

And I think Mr. Hinkle is a Richmond treasure, if not a national one.

Joe Kline is a fine writer, even though his punctuation may be highly suspect. I never used the dash in place of a comma, until I began writing professionally. Then, I noticed Associated Press editors doing it, and I figured they knew what they were doing, so ...
It also be a hangover from the days of early broadcasting, when a comma meant a brief pause and the dash meant a longer one. We, the media-consuming public, think aurally these days, so it may be connected with that new-communications phenomenon.
But since I have no idea where Mr. Kline cut his newsteeth, I can’t say that’s the reason. Maybe he just did what I did; accepted the wisdom of AP Stylebook writing to an excessive degree.

Very good idea-the dash thing-for me to try.
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I don’t know anything about proper writing,—- but I do like this method of making a sentence clear and easier to digest. Have at it.

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