[rarestia]

I was an English major in college and NEVER heard of using - for ANY kind of punctuation....NOT EVER!

Same. I have a graduate degree in English, and our professors would gratuitously mark up our papers if we used dashes or emdashes. They were "lazy punctuation" according to two of them. If you don't know how to effectively use commas and semicolons, you're missing out on basic sentence structure.

[nopardons]

EXACTLY so and your profs were correct!

Many thanks for validating what I had posted; much appreciated!

And I'm sure that your profs were as hard as mine were, when grading an original work. My favorite English prof was a fantastic teacher, but in order to get an A, was, unlike today, expected to be "perfect" in every single aspect.

[alexander_busek]

Same. I have a graduate degree in English, and our professors would gratuitously mark up our papers if we used dashes or emdashes. They were "lazy punctuation" according to two of them. If you don't know how to effectively use commas and semicolons, you're missing out on basic sentence structure.

The Chicago Manual of Style

The 13th Edition of A Manual of Style

Revised and Expanded

DASH

5.82 There are several kinds of dashes, differing from one another according to length. There are en dashes, em dashes, and 2- and 3-em dashes. Each kind of dash has its own use. The most commonly used dash is the em dash. In the following material, the em dash is referred to simply as "the dash." The other dashes are identified.

SUDDEN BREAKS AND ABRUPT CHANGES

... pages of explanation...

USE WITH OTHER PUNCTUATION

... pages of explanation...

Folks, I rest my case.

Regards,

[alexander_busek]

[...] our professors would gratuitously mark up our papers [...]

So, "without good reason," or "free of charge?"

gra·tuit·ous·ly

[ɡrəˈtjuːɪtəsli]

adverb

without good reason; unjustifiably:

"artefacts were gratuitously destroyed" · "gratuitously insulting remarks"

free of charge:

"his care was provided gratuitously"

Regards,