I make liberal use of the em dash myself which I never did when I was teaching in an academic setting but like Dorothy in Oz we have to accommodate to our times and setting, not to mention our reading audience. I spent most of my career in a suit, but now formality has all but disappeared in everyday society and reading and writing along with it. I used to believe there was 'correct' English - I now concede there are clocks of usage and that includes everything from urban slang to criminal argot and yes, even ebonics. The world has changed and that came home to me one day when Deb and I were visiting a school from the 18oo's. Many of the texts on the grade 6 curriculum I was teaching in my pre-university course. In addition to a challenging level of readability, the formatting and text size was daunting, even for me. All those block paragraphs simply overwhelmed. Modern ovels read more like plays, in my opinion.