EM DASH
6.90 Indicating sudden breaks. An em dash or a pair of em dashes may indicate a sudden break in thought or sentence structure or an interruption in dialogue. (Ellipsis points may also serve this purpose; see 11.45.)
``Will he--can he--obtain the necessary signatures?'' asked Mill.
``Well, I don't know,'' I began tentatively. ``I thought I might--''
``Might what?'' she demanded.
If the break belongs to the surrounding sentence rather than to the quoted material, the em dashes must appear outside the quotation marks.
``Someday he's going to hit one of those long shots, and''--his voice turned huffy--``I won't be there to see it.''
so my question is this: is my following a legitimate use of the em dash?
... we danced for a while, got some drinks, kept dancing—. we went outside a couple times. then, finally exhausted, we left and went to ihop. ...
(black book, 200708201708 j.)
or:
... stay up playing some cribbage, get online for a bit, pass out on the computer for a bit, manage to get my contacts out and go to sleep.
wake up on sunday,—wrote about it before—
monday, i went to silverbow café for a bagel, cookie, and latté. ...
(black book, 200708072130 r, j.)
or:
... i tried to push some love onto her. my bloody valentine, sometimes: ``i don’t know how you could not love me now—''
(blue book, april sixth, 5:43pm.)
2. why the comma before the first em dash?
3. seems legit to me.
because i'm using the em dash as a pause, not an interruption. this use isn't in chicago.
> 2. why the comma before the first em dash?
i'm using the em dash as a stand-in for the ellipsis, because the ellipsis could be misinterpreted as an omission.
> 3. seems legit to me.
but in chicago's example, the em dash was used at the end of a quotation because there was another interrupting quotation that followed immediately. i have no such thing here.
2. same
3. I doubt their examples are comprehensive. though, I guess an ellipsis might be more appropriate there.
if you want a pause, I think an ellipsis would be more appropriate. a dash makes me think you're either stopping short or omitting something that might come after "kept dancing".
I have taken two liberties. Nietzsche occasionally uses dots, usually four, as a punctuation mark; for example, but by no means there alone, at the end of sections 62 and 227. In serious works in the English-speaking world dots are so generally taken to indicate omissions that it did not seem advisable to follow Nietzsche's usage. Dashes have therefore been used instead.
(Walter Kaufmann, Translator's Preface, Beyond Good and Evil.)
but kaufmann definitely doesn't even come close to using the chicago style.
for reference:
Men, not high and hard enough to have any right to try to form man as artists; men, not strong and farsighted enough to let the foreground law of thousandfold failure and ruin prevail, though it cost them sublime self-conquest; men, not noble enough to see the abysmally different order of rank, chasm of rank, between man and man--such men have so far help sway over Europe, with their ``equal before God,'' until finally a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre has been bred, the European of today--
(FN, BGE 62, WK tr.)
Ellipses
11.51 Definition and form. An ellipsis--the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage--is indicated by ellipsis points (or dots), not by asterisks. Ellipsis points are three spaced periods ( . . . ), sometimes preceded or followed by other punctuation. They must always appear together on the same line, but any preceding punctuation may appear at the end of the line above (see also 11.64).
chicago doesn't offer any use for ellipses other than omissions in the entire section.
however:
Hyphens and Dashes
EM DASH
6.87 Versatility and frequency of use. The em dash, often simply called the dash, is the most commonly used and most versatile of the dashes. To avoid confusion, no sentence should contain more than two em dashes; if more than two elements need to be set off, use parentheses (see 6.98).
to me, this suggests that the em dash could be correctly used for numerous things, many of which are listed in chicago, but perhaps not all (like a pause).