What can we learn from our enemies?

SowiesoGroyp

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There's no need to replace the comma with an em dash in this sentence: "The left realizes that the political is downstream of the cultural, and so their advocates proliferate their message via the culture." Also, if we're being pedantic, the last sentence is using "like" as a conjunction and needlessly capitalizing "Right."
 

SowiesoGroyp

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There's no need to replace the comma with an em dash in this sentence: "The left realizes that the political is downstream of the cultural, and so their advocates proliferate their message via the culture." Also, if we're being pedantic, the last sentence is using "like" as a conjunction and needlessly capitalizing "Right."
i thought my edit of "center of the left" to "center-left" made it clear that i was also making stylistic/subjective edits, not just pointing out objective grammatical errors. (capitalizing "Right" is stylistic btw)
 

SowiesoGroyp

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there's really no need to ever use em dashes, and u can definitely overuse them (see: logo_daedalus) but i am of the opinion that they help prevent writing from feeling monotonous
 

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Developing and publishing video games. Young people are watching anime and playing video games. Kids especially love indie games. If you make a sneakybased indie game and bait YouTubers into playing it, you could forge a substantial fanbase of future RWers.
 

Clovis

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Developing and publishing video games. Young people are watching anime and playing video games. Kids especially love indie games. If you make a sneakybased indie game and bait YouTubers into playing it, you could forge a substantial fanbase of future RWers.
Also, trans people, while fantastic at making music, are TERRIBLE at game development.
 

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I know it's stylistic, but I pointed it out because the same style isn't extended to the "left." I brought up the em dash as unnecessary, even stylistically, because "and so" conveys the transition well enough. And I agree that they can help writing from feeling monotonous, but their overuse irritates me. Colons and commas (even parentheses) could replace most em dashes without any loss.
 

SowiesoGroyp

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I know it's stylistic, but I pointed it out because the same style isn't extended to the "left." I brought up the em dash as unnecessary, even stylistically, because "and so" conveys the transition well enough. And I agree that they can help writing from feeling monotonous, but their overuse irritates me. Colons and commas (even parentheses) could replace most em dashes without any loss.
capitalizing Right and not left is like capitalizing White and not jewish. it is a voice thing

the sentence you're talking about has another comma after the "and," and i generally don't like sentences with multiple parts separated by commas because it sounds like you're just droning on and on. if i removed the first em dash, i'd probably want to replace the other comma with an em dash
 

SowiesoGroyp

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to clarify: if i was writing a dry academic essay, i would almost entirely cut out em dashes, whereas in argumentative writing i would use them much more & apply what i said in my previous post
 
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