The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-07-29
From Scrihner's Magazine.

LAVE you not noticed, 1n our cur rent literature the widespread epi- \ X demic of dashes that has broken out upon the printed page? In books and l in periodicals it is alike prevalent; treatise, essay and story are equally sub ject to it. I sometimes wonder. in pick ing up one of the most popular magazines. if an editorial fiat has gone forth that nc | tale shall be accepted unless it contains at least one dash to each sentence. | Do they pay by the dash, one wonders, as the eye follows gap and hiatus in line l after line and column after column? True, these blank spaces often constitute the best part of the page, and the grateful ! eye sometimes rests upon them with relief but so plentiful and so unnecss- sary are they that one wonders if they point to gradual but supe elimination of the text itself. in deference to a gem eration whose animal energies so far out strip the mental Are we going back to that long howl or bark, innocent of words and of ideas. which MT. Jesperson, in a | learned essay, assures us was the origin of human speech?
 | The dashes are of as many kinds as are the kinds of style that they decorate. Most common, perhaps, is the dash of mex pressible emotion.
 Real love is--' she broke off and re- turned to her light tone.
 "'Don't you know-haven't you seen that-that I've always loved your
 "It doesn't seem as if it could be a real, grown up love
 Their eyes met and glanced away.
 "'can't you understand
 "'You are sorry you said 1t. You would
 take it back if you could
 Then there is the psychological subtle dash.
 'These words. he was well aware, left his wife-given her painful narrowness-a
 bristling culver of retorts to draw from; yet it was not without a silent surprise that he saw her, with her irritated eyes on him, extact bolt of finest point. The pleasure, then. in her view, you make but since you make out such wonders-is to be all for us only?''
 | Space forbids further quotations. One need only turn to our most serions writers of fiction to find instances innumerabls l of this baldly apparent. self conscious de- vice for obtaining piquant effects. Closely related to the first class, the dash of inexpressible emotion, possibly also. though I should hardly dare sug- sest this, to the second class. is the plain lazy dash. This hardly needs illustration; 1t confronts us everywhere. Naturally, it | is easier to draw line upon the page | than 1t is to write out even the very ob-
 vious words that go with the plain lazy l style.
 In all these types there is a fundamen- | tai insincerity, whether the author Is try
 ing to suggest more emotion than is really there, or to hint a deeper mean ing than is in his mind. By this device
 he imposes upon the reader. making him supply what the author lacks, suggesting,
 by this hiatus and that long pause, un- l speakable things that he may have been. but probably was not, thinking or feel ing, but which he apparently hopes the
 reader will take the trouble to think and
 to feel
 | No good tailor would think of leaving an inch gap between sleeve and armhoie' nor would decent carpenter leave yawn- ing pauses between his shingles. My chief I disintegrating force upon both form and subject matter The integrity of the sen- tence is disappearing before it, and with
 if is disappearing that skillful adjustment of minor phrases to the main phrase which alone can achieve delicate grada- l lions and shades of meaning. The art
 oc modifying your idea and explaining it in fashion that brings out the relative
 values of the more and the less important Ina~ts is becoming lost art, and the mas- Itery of conjunctions, so marvellous in Newman's closely knit and logical prose, has already largely disappeared.
 Instead of a finely wrought bit of archi-
 lecture, where every atom is in it's right ful place. you are given. in the typical modern sentence. head of rolling stones,
 whose harsh sides grate one against an-
 other. as the meaning scatters every
 where and nowhere. the little clauss that