Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Before it moved to The New Yorker:
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Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into
Levi Fox, Gretchen Sund, and Caroline Altman, three enterprising undergraduates from the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia, have put up a stimulating suite investigating the unique status of The New Yorker as a “local” magazine with a decidedly “national” profile.
According to the editor’s introduction, the suite “examines the people who defined New Yorker humor in its early days and drove the magazine’s success” and takes a look at its formerly “elitist advertising policy.” They look at some of the analogues of The New Yorker, both at home (Vanity Fair, Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s) and abroad (Germany’s Simplicissimus, London’s Punch) . They also take a peek at a few memorable wartime covers.
Good work! I hope that all three of them become passionate Emdashes readers—if they aren’t already!
Note: Thanks for The Millions for including a link to this in his most recent “Curiosities” post. Emily kindly reminds me that it’s been sitting in the Rossosphere for ages! I thought it looked familiar.
Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
You'd like to know more about the writers and artists and what our column titles mean? We live to serve!
We welcome tips, questions, comments, and corrections, and are always on the lookout for ardent, obsessive new contributors. Click here to email us.
We host occasional book giveaways. Publishers, please email us for our postal address.
Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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