I think that the "—" is the "um" of the written word. Being a professional web diva, I format a lot of copy and try to make sure that things like the -- get transferred to an actual "—" amongst other things. When you've replaced that particular symbol 3 times in one sentence, you just have to stop and see what's being said.

Now, this is not to say that I'm some big grammar snob. I did go through Advertising in the School of Journalism, and did suffer through growing up in an English teacher's household, so perhaps I'm a bit more savvy than your average person about general grammar rules. Oh sure, I fall prey to many standard sentence construction problems. The run-on sentence is my biggest foe. But seeing the abuse of the "—" is just getting to be too much.

I remember back in Junior High School using the "—" liberally as a way to sidestep my confusion about when to use the colon or the semi-colon. It was also helpful when enabling my fabulous run-on sentences. However, it seems that lately the web culture, and marketing people in particular, have grabbed onto the "—" as a way to conveniently string together thoughts in an almost stream-of-consciousness attempt to fit as many buzzwords into one sentence as possible.

The biggest problem I have with it is that I have to go through and manually fix these. Because they are using a printed crutch, I spend my days with the find-and-replace. I probably wouldn't even mind if it actually aided in making a sentence or concept more clear to the reader, but usually it just ends up making a sentence even more difficult to read than sanskrit pecked out by a KFC-beakless chicken.

But — I don't know — maybe it does help things. After all — I'm not one to judge.