When a Dash forces You Down a Rabbit Hole
By: Sarah Stratton
If you know me well, you know that I proclaim to be the DASH QUEEN. I absolutely love the dash. It fits my writing personality perfectly.
When Jason Campbell (Ruth Doyle) invited me to teach his 5th grade students the dash, I obviously jumped at the opportunity. (for more reasons than loving the dash–I love co-teaching with Jason Campbell too!)
He started out the lesson teaching his students the Ed opener. They already had learned the LY opener, double adjective opener, clause opener and the ING opener–the beauty of knowing all of these–those 5th graders were able to specialize and pick their favorite openers to contribute to their writing voice. Another perk–they understood the function and logistics of the openers already–thus teaching a new one was much easier!
It didn’t take his students long to figure out how to “do” the ED opener–both with a single ED word and with an ED phrase. It was quick. They immediately saw what the ED opener could do to their writing. They learned how to–in the revising process–take two simple (and boring) sentences and combine them into one that opened with an ED word or phrase.
When I asked how many of them thought this opener might have a chance of becoming a favorite–thus part of their writing voice–many raised their hands each period.
The students ended the half of a period lesson practicing and sharing their own ED openers. They were literally “fighting” to share (with raised hands, of course) theirs and were eager to get me to snap a picture of their masterpieces.
I stepped in and got to teach the second half. The students loved the dash. They couldn’t understand why it was so rarely used by writers. It wasn’t even hard to do. Because they were writing narratives today, I decided to teach them the dash that interrupts too. When they used the dashes in their dialogue, they obviously used the dashes correctly, but funny thing, their dialogue tended to include parents interrupting them. (“Can I–” “No!”) (“Will you–” “No!”) Yep–they got it!
This DASH QUEEN then showed them my favorite dash–the dash that explains and/or emphasizes.
After discussing the definition and function of this dash, examples really helped the students. We looked at samples I created and samples from Armstrong’s Sounder. (He loves dashes too–it was easy to show several of his examples.)
They rocked their dashes too. When I asked the students if any felt like the dash may be joining their favorites, many from each class raised their hands.
I talked to Jason this morning, and he told me, “They’re doing so well using dashes! I’ll have to share a few with you.” (And he did–so you get to see them too.)
But WAIT. What about that rabbit hole? I haven’t even mentioned it. It’s so complicated and funny, I saved it until the end.
Okay. So…when I teach the dash, I teach it as a CLICK CLICK. (IYKYK) The hyphen-minus key (located between the 0 and = keys) is what one typically uses to create the dash. Because it’s a PAUSE, it’s longer than a hyphen–thus the CLICK CLICK. One simply clicks the hyphen-minus key twice in a row to create the dash. For example, this Google doc is creating my dash. When I double click the hyphen-minus key and keep going, it takes the two hyphens and makes them one big dash automatically. However, sometimes it doesn’t do that; instead, it leaves the two hyphens right next to each other like this--. If a human (aka real person) graded this, he would assume it’s a dash by how I’ve used it. But what about AI? Jason asked me: ”Will AI know the double hyphen as a dash if the program doesn’t automatically bring the two hyphens together?”
I didn’t even think of that. Good question.
This is what led us down the rabbit hole, and this is what we have learned so far:
1. Google doesn’t always automatically bring the two hyphens together as one dash. It does sometimes; it’s doing it for me right now. However, sometimes it doesn’t. Even so, there are two ways to create a dash if the program doesn’t automatically create it with the CLICK CLICK of the hyphen-minus key.
ALT 0151
INSERT/Special Characters/search for em dash/click on the em dash
As you can see, creating the dash can be a bit laborious, and to tell you the truth, it ruins one’s concentration having to search for that punctuation mark while composing. I tried it. Yuck.
2. WORD automatically creates the dash by clicking the hyphen-minus key twice.
3. Jason’s students discovered today that their Chromebooks automatically created the dash with the CLICK CLICK. (Yay)
But what about ATLAS? Good question, huh? Would anybody really know the answer to this or even care? (Like who cares if a kid gets docked for a symbol that isn’t recognized as the dash it is supposed to be? Obviously, Jason and I do. We’d feel guilty teaching them the dash if it penalizes them rather than giving them extra credit for sophistication like it should.
Yep, there’s more. We’re still in the rabbit hole at this point. Jason got on the ATLAS practice writing test and hit the hyphen-minus key twice–no automatic dash–just two hyphens in a row.
However, ALT 0151 worked. (Kids won’t remember this though.) Additionally, at the top of the page, there was a SPECIAL CHARACTERS icon and the em dash was there. This is probably what we’ll show them to use. And we’ll have to tout this as special. Look–you are part of the elite few who use dashes. And to do this–you even have to go to a special place to find the dash to use it–instead of–Sorry! You’re going to have to write–stop–look for the em dash–click it–and then return to writing. It’s all in the presentation of something, isn't it?
On a final and very interesting note, when I googled (yep–still part of the rabbit hole) AI and dashes together, I learned that many think the use of dashes in writing is a sign that the writing is AI generated because AI uses dashes for sophistication. How funny is that? Hey kids–want to write as well as AI? Then use dashes!
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