Em dashes are my absolute favorite punctuation. Almost every English teacher I have had, both in grade school and now in college, has told me that I use them too frequently. I find them to be more powerful when trying to emphasize something than other choices–and if I want to emphasize something, of course I’d use the more emphatic way of doing so. But, at the end of the day, I understand that this is a stylistic choice I have made that does not undercut someone else’s choice to use a comma or a full stop. I haven’t listened to my English teachers–clearly–but for students who are learning English as a first language or, even, students who are more apt to taking their professor’s grammatical/stylistic rules into account, their more “standardized” English feels like it lacks passion or emphasis. I’d be interested in knowing how other people feel about the matter–does punctuation inherently change something’s meaning? Does that mean we should allow writers more or less freedom when using punctuation? How do you teach punctuation, with all of its connotations, rather than just “here is what is and here is what isn’t appropriate in academic writing”?

I just rediscovered an old favorite slam poem of mine about teaching English to students as a second language in schools. It highlights a lot of the frustration and power imbalances that comes along with teaching a student content they don’t even know in their own language, much less another. I highly recommend taking the three minutes to listen to it; Dylan Garity is a fantastic poet.

Below is a link leading to the presentation on South African’s English, as done by Gerald Dryden, Marcel Elkouri, Emilee McCubbins, Hannah Sullivan, and Matt Woodward.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GGNXX_e1nHWf1H3BPiPzLC8H1gnM-Yv7cWY-CVWkmgM/edit?usp=sharing