\u201c’Hope’ is the thing with feathers –<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
That perches in the soul –<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
And sings the tune without the words –<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
And never stops – at all \u2013”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century poet, is perhaps the most famous proponent of dashes. She used dashes of all lengths to express breaks in her poems\u2014almost none of which follow standard conventions. Historians and copyeditors have argued about how to understand her dashes for years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Luckily for you, none of Dickinson\u2019s various dashes will appear on the SAT. But dashes in other contexts are<\/em> tested on the SAT writing section. Like commas, semicolons, colons, and apostrophes, dashes are part of the Standard English Conventions section of the SAT writing test. Questions in this section ask you to correct <\/em>intentional grammar errors in the passages provided.<\/p>\r\n