belated monday punch-in-the-face blogging

this week i'm swinging less of a fist and more of a sock full of oranges at the new yorker's copyediting staff for first robbing me of my beloved en dash and then reinserting it sporadically and haphazardly in correct but entirely unnecessary ways, catching me off guard and making me lose my literary balance mid-sentence. this seems like a cruel thing to do to a reader so loyal as myself, and i can only assume that there is an unpublicized feud being carried out between the editorial director and some grammatically sensitive foe, as this is a knife that one wields with the sole intention of cutting deeply. but i'm pleading with you, henry finder, please stop jabbing that knife into my eye; i've done nothing to you, and yet i am the unhappy (and i assume unintended) victim. why would you keep the en for relaying sports scores but refuse to use it in place of a hyphen in post–world war II? WHY ARE YOU TORTURING ME?????

*thwump thwump thwump* goes the sock full of oranges upon your inscrutable, villainous head, and your pleas for mercy fall upon my deaf ears, just as your senseless, laissez-faire punctuation falls upon your own uncaring eyes.

*thwump*