ShmoopTube

00:03

Here's your shmoop du jour...

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You may not have missed this passage, but it missed you. Hit pause and spend a minute or two with it.

00:20

What can be inferred from the frequent use of the dash in this passage?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Looking back over the passage, it's certainly true... there are more dashes here than at the Olympic games.

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So to answer this one, we really just have to fall back on our understanding of punctuation

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and literary devices.

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What's the author's reason for packing this passage chock full of dashes?

00:50

Does he think they're visually appealing? Is his "period" key broken? Did the "Dash

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Mafia" get to him? Nah. Dashes don't imply censoring, abridgment,

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or unknown information.

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They are used for one thing and one thing only -- to indicate an abrupt halt or transition in speech.

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Looking over our five answer choices, B is the only one that fits the bill.

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The moral of this question? Don't cut people off mid-sentence...

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...or the Dash Mafia will come for you...

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