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The Frustrating Effects of Overusing the Twenty-Seventh Letter and Em Dashes in Poetry

  • Bridgette O. James
  • Jan 30
  • 2 min read

Does the use of the twenty-seventh letter irritate you too? How about too many em/en dashes in a poem? Does it feel as if some poets are misusing the ampersand: &&&&?


Sunshine & rain & all that fun –
& me relaxing on beach – not bothered & …

 Let’s talk about WHAT a poem does. It is a piece that should use lexical resource (a person has) or language to create something new?


Style over Substance

The frivolous use of the ampersand can actually distract from your poem.
The frivolous use of the ampersand can actually distract from your poem.

If you’re more interested in the stylistic aspects of writing more the emotional response your work should convey, then by all means keep over using the ampersand.  

We all use the & instead of ‘and’ on the rare occasion for s structural effect, but the & sometimes makes your poem look pretentious too.

 

The conjunction AND has a valid place in English grammar please. Who on earth begins a poetic line with an ampersand?  I literally stopped reading a person’s poem because I got so vexed that they DIDN’T know the difference between AND, and the ampersand.


Example of a ruined piece:


Ben & Jerry/ & Mark & me/

We sang - / & we sang & / we danced /

 

Then there’re those who cannot write ONE poem without inserting an en (British) or em dash (American). I’m not seeing avoid them. I’m saying punctuation goes way beyond just adding a dash because Tinubu adds dashes to his poem.  In good poetry journals like the Poetry Review, you’ll find well-written poetry tht doesn’t rely on the stylistic aspects of English language in order to convey meaning.   

 
 
 

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Featured Writer- Bridgette James

A comparative analysis of English Language Use by creatives in two countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, by Bridgette James.

Hypothesis:

Any discussion of ethnolinguistic factors affecting language proficiency cannot be premised without examining the meaning of language. Cambridge Dictionary Online (2023) puts forward a concise definition that would be used in this paper: a system made up of phonemes, words, and grammar rules on how to use that particular language. An emphasis on maintaining a system of rules and standards in order to convey meaning in language is a persuasive argument (Open Learn, 2024).  The language under discussion here is the English used in two sub-Saharan countries, Sierra Leone, English 01 and Malawi, English 02.

Language had two of the meta functions first recognised by Thompson (2014 in Open Learn (2024)  in the creative pieces studied from March 2022 to December 2023: ideational and textual roles. In the poetry and stories analysed writers utilised English language to fictionally represent the world visualised in their imagination to convey written messages in textual forms.

In creative writing a speaker’s language is presumed to influence their thoughts and conceptualisation of ideas, validating the theory purported by German linguist Johann  Georg  Hamann (1905 cited in  De Gruyter Mouton 1968). Wilhelm von Humboldt discuss. Humboldt and Herder reportedly saw an alignment between language use and behavioural patterns affected by the speaker’s culture. Culture here is synonymous with how individuals from the same language community use the language under consideration based on recurrent themes and expressions in their writing. (Britannica, accessed 2023) This research concerns itself with factors affecting proficiency in English language based on common behaviours in aforenamed communities and from henceforth referred to as English 01 and English 02.

History of how English arrived in the chosen communities

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To give a historical overview, English was transported to Malawi via the similar route of colonisation by Britian and the establishment of English speaking mainly missionary schools on whose premises school age children in  both nations were  taught in English. (Matiki, 2001; accessed in 2024.) A notable feature of the way English arrived in Sierra Leone was through the deportation of freed slaves…

 

Miriam Conteh-Morgan (1997) highlighted the lack of extensive sociological research into the use of English language in Sierra Leone; she argued that it may be due to an [erroneous] perception that English is a native Sierra Leonean language spoken by the Krios. Conteh-Morgan distinguishes the English spoken in Sierra Leone from the native speaker variety- the variation spoken in Sierra Leone has been influenced by indigenous languages. My research unearthed the influence of the Krio language on English evidenced by the lack of subject-verb number coordination in the third person singular in the material of a large cohort of creative writers studied from March 2022 to December 2023.

Role English plays in Malawi

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To quote A. J. Matiki (2001), English was given official status in 1968 in Malawi when the government designated it as an official language. Mikiti has argues that assigning English such a high status has effectively led to the marginalisation of non-English speakers in the country. My contradictory argument centres on the need for Malawian creative writers to increase the frequency of English use in order to attain proficiency. This research shows a direct link between the use of the language for lengthy periods per day and a demonstration of level of proficiency required for writers.

Penned in Rage Journal, Amplifying Marginalised Voices

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