I flipped open its latch and peered inside. A—gold tooth?
I flipped open its latch and peered inside. A ... gold tooth?
Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was—a whale!
Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was ... a whale!
What's the right symbol to use in the examples above?
em dashes are usually used to denote an interruption or sudden change — whether in dialogue, thought or narrative — ellipses are for pauses, again in all respects.
'I just don't see why—
'I don't care what you think,' Johan barked, turning from me before I could protest.
'She was just...' His face turned pale as his memory returned to that night.
'Just what?' I asked, eager for more.
here are some resources:
Jodie Renner Editing
Novel Publicity
Writer's Relief
I might use an M-dash for the whale example, because it's startling. For the gold watch, that's more of a thoughtful pause, so it would take an ellipsis.
Also related on this site: Using dashes in writing dialogue and How not to overuse ellipsis?
Adding to the answers by Lauren Ipsum and CLockeWork.
I'll just look at the second example:
Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was — a whale!
Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was ... a whale!
It seems to me that the dash as a sign of a sudden change works well in the narrative, but not in direct speech:
"What happened?"
"I found something on the beach," John replied. "I saw something and at first I thought it was an elephant? But elephants don't frequent beaches. It was — a whale!"
To me, this sounds strange. John is talking as if he were writing a book!, which he is not. He is supposed to be speaking with someone. But this works fine:
"It was ... a whale!"
In direct speech, an ellipsis signifies a pause. A dash in direct speech can only signify an interruption, where the speech breaks off and does not continue.
Only in the narrator's narrative, which follows different stylistic principles, does a dash mean a sudden change. Here it cannot mean a break-off, because the narrative does not break off until the end of the book. Only if the narrative is written as if it was spoken, can a dash in the narrative means a break:
Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was— What? No. Stop interrupting me, and let me tell my tale. It was a whale!
And an ellipsis has no place in the narrative, in my opinion. What does this mean:
Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was ... a whale!
Does it mean that the narrator pauses? He cannot, because he is not talking. There are no pauses in writing, or rather, they take a different form, e.g. as full stops, paragraph breaks, and so on. In poetry you might do:
It was. A whale.
or more commonly:
it was
a whale.
In prose you need to use different constructions:
It was, as we found, a whale.
Here, the subsidiary clause, serves as a suspenseful pause.
To sum this up:
(a) ellipsis:
(b) dash:
I'd use ellipses for pauses, dashes are usually used for interruption.
"I found this - "
"That doesn't matter, look what I found!"
As opposed to:
"She... She's dead."
