Obama’s staff is not only blowing through dollars with blinding speed, it’s also using dashes with reckless abandon.

His staff seems to consider the punctuation mark an effective way to appear conversational. In reality, it makes a memo choppy and incorrect.

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, recently sent out a memo praising Obama’s performance in the Friday debate. The memo began in typical fashion, using an improper dash:

Mike –

We put together an ad today that captures Barack’s victory in last night’s debate in 30 seconds.

And it ended with a clunker:

Barack broke through last night with voters who were watching — but we need to get the word out to the millions who didn’t tune in.

Some dashes can be defended, but it’s pretty hard to make the case that any punctuation mark other than a comma should precede the conjunction but.

Listen up, Mr. Plouffe: The dash is an emotional punctuation mark used to signal an interruption or shift in thought, an abrupt break. It is widely overused. (Hint, hint.) We urge you to read more about the dash here.

The greeting in Plouffe’s memo should have been punctuated with a comma.
Dear Mike,

would also work.

Or, if you wanted to more actively greet a person, you could use hi. But be careful: That calls for a second comma that few e-mailers use.

Hi, Mike,

is correct. Hi is often mistake as a substitute for dear, an adjective. But hi is an interjection, like oh or yes. Interjections are staccato words inserted to convey emotion. When an interjection begins a sentence, it must be followed by a comma.

If Plouffe doesn’t heed this lesson, we may have to resort to some colorful interjections.

* * *

Here’s a little extra credit for the overachievers who are still with us. Take another look at the first sentence in Plouffe’s memo.

We put together an ad today that captures Barack’s victory in last night’s debate in 30 seconds.

Notice the two prepositional phrases at the end: in last night’s debate, in 30 seconds. The latter one appears to qualify Barack’s victory, suggesting he won the lengthy debate in a 30-second period. Obviously, Plouffe wants to assert that Barack was victorious throughout the debate.

The dangling prepositional phrase “in 30 seconds” also might be linked to the sentence’s opening clause, indicating that creating the ad took a mere 30 seconds. Again, probably not the message Plouffe wants to convey.

There is a simple remedy to eliminate confusion. It also makes the opening line more concise.

We put together a 30-second ad today that captures Barack’s victory in last night’s debate.

Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?