Every country has news consumers—and news avoiders—who are media illiterate. OJ-UGANDA’s media literacy section exists to change that. Follow along.
If you look at the screenshot below carefully, you will notice one thing that is hard to miss: the long dashes called em dashes.
These days, the mere mention of em dashes—particularly on platforms like LinkedIn—leads many to assume the writing is AI-generated..
But the em dashes in this screenshot reveal something many readers rarely think about when reading news: editorial discipline.
The New Yorker is effectively telling readers: We have a style guide, and it dictates that sentences like these use em dashes.
Long before AI made em dashes ubiquitous, the New Yorker was already using them. And it continues to use them even though many people now associate them with AI-written text.
Many will see this as a punctuation issue. To a certain extent, it is. But it also says a lot about trust, newsroom culture and reader expectations.
You will not catch the New Yorker using a hyphen or an en dash where an em dash should be. That is editorial discipline.
Small editorial lapses reveal how newsrooms think about accuracy.
If, for example, a news outlet uses periods in acronyms such as U.S.A.I.D.—and does so consistently—it signals great attention not just to detail but to accuracy.
Most people will agree that it is much easier—and faster—to write USAID without full stops/periods. The fact that a news outlet adds them each time the acronym appears signals editorial discipline.
In Uganda, however, the story is different. While well-established outlets have style guides—detailed, evolving documents that spell out the dos and don’ts of writing and presenting news—they often fail to follow them.
The screenshot below is only a glimpse of a wider pattern. One article uses em dashes; another uses en dashes where one and the same punctuation mark should appear.
Why do Ugandan news outlets misuse punctuation? And what does careless punctuation reveal about how seriously a newsroom treats accuracy?
It may be because the pressure to publish quickly and meet deadlines creates lapses. It may also be because some reporters and copy editors do not care much about the style guide—or do not fully know when to use one punctuation mark instead of another.
A style guide only works if it is applied consistently. Without one or without enforcing it, a newsroom becomes a collection of individual habits rather than a unified editorial voice.
Every journalist starts to punctuate the way they like. Writers apply personal habits, and consistency becomes difficult to maintain.
Readers rarely stop to notice whether punctuation is applied consistently. But a newsroom that lacks consistency in punctuation may also struggle with other forms of precision: from spelling names correctly to maintaining factual consistency.
For many local outlets, the incentive to improve and the cost of inconsistency may be minimal. But news organisations that pride themselves on quality often pay close attention to what readers barely notice.
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CORRECTION: The original version of this article cited the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as an example of consistent em dash use, but a closer examination found their dash usage has been inconsistent across articles and years. The piece has been updated to use a more accurate example.
🔴 If you care about truth, credibility and understanding how journalism really works, media literacy is essential. Follow OJ-UGANDA’s media literacy section to sharpen your news sense and separate fact from fiction. Media literacy is your weapon against misinformation, manipulation and media distrust.
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