⚖️ Dashes in Legal Writing ⚖️
Level 1 Score: 0/8
Level 1: Identify the Correct Dash
Instructions: In each sentence, decide what belongs in place of the double hyphen—the tiny hyphen, mid-sized en-dash, emphasizing em-dash, or no dash at all?
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Question 1 of 8
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🔒 Complete Level 1 to unlock Level 2 🔒
Level 2: Place the Em-Dashes
Instructions: Copy and paste the following excerpt into the box below. Then, add em-dashes to improve the flow and create emphasis. Submit your answer to see how your version compares to Justice Kagan's dissent in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton. If you place nine em-dashes exactly as she did, you'll master both levels!
For them, the category of obscene and therefore unprotected speech is narrower. So adults have a constitutional right to view the very same speech that a State may prohibit for children. And it is a fact of life and also of law that adults and children do not live in hermetically sealed boxes. In preventing children from gaining access to "obscene for children" speech, States sometimes take measures impeding adults from viewing it too even though, for adults, it is constitutionally protected expression. What, then, to do? Cases raising that question have reached this Court on no fewer than four prior occasions and we have given the same answer, consistent with general free speech principles, each and every time. . . . If H. B. 1181 is the best Texas can do meaning, the means of achieving the State's objective while restricting adults' speech rights the least then the statute should pass First Amendment review. But what if Texas could do better what if Texas could achieve its interest without so interfering with adults' constitutionally protected rights in viewing the speech H. B. 1181 covers? That is the ultimate question on which the Court and I disagree.
Em-dashes: 0
💡 Tip: Em-dashes matching Justice Kagan's appear in green; additional em-dashes appear in blue; and missing em-dashes appear in red. Get all nine to complete the challenge!
🎯 Quick tip: Type -- (double hyphen) and it automatically becomes an em-dash!
🎯 Quick tip: Type -- (double hyphen) and it automatically becomes an em-dash!
🔍 Hint 1: Em-dashes can replace commas when you want to create more emphasis or dramatic pause.
📌 Hint 2: Look for parenthetical phrases that could be set off with em-dashes for emphasis.
💡 Hint 3: Em-dashes can also signal an abrupt break in thought or add explanatory information.
⚖️ Hint 4: In legal writing style, em-dashes have no spaces around them—like this—not like this — with spaces.
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Level 1 Complete
You're mastering legal dashes!
Em-Dash Skills: Supreme
✨ You've Mastered Justice Kagan's Em-Dash Style! ✨
You can be a great legal writer.