I make liberal use of the em dash myself which I never did when I was teaching in an academic setting but like Dorothy in Oz we have to accommodate to our times and setting, not to mention our reading audience. I spent most of my career in a suit, but now formality has all but disappeared in everyday society and reading and writing along with it. I used to believe there was 'correct' English - I now concede there are clocks of usage and that includes everything from urban slang to criminal argot and yes, even ebonics. The world has changed and that came home to me one day when Deb and I were visiting a school from the 18oo's. Many of the texts on the grade 6 curriculum I was teaching in my pre-university course. In addition to a challenging level of readability, the formatting and text size was daunting, even for me. All those block paragraphs simply overwhelmed. Modern ovels read more like plays, in my opinion.
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Sorry for some of the typo's above but Hive wouldn't allow me to edit bc of HBD - whatever that is. GRRR!!
It might be relevant...I just made a post...in which I also mention you.
Hope you do not mind.
https://hive.blog/hive-110490/@arthur.grafo/brighten-your-inner-world-with-the-gifts-offered-by-hearts-that-inspire
I cannot help thinking that it depends on where you look.
People, even young ones, still check out books from the libraries, classics and even fiction written fifty years ago.
At the bookstore, I find that the market has moved form slim 180 page books to most books being above 400 pages nowadays.
I have been looking for a young person who enjoys my kind of books so as to leave all mine to them when I die - and an acquaintance introduced me to his 22 year old daughter...who told me she loves big books, especially if they are more than one book. When she saw my books with a number of them being of 800 pages and maybe 8 volumes, she was thrilled.
I think our problem is we are being affected by spending so much time among those who live on the web.
I would rather write for those who live lives of their own.
:)
Again, your observations are so perceptive, Alex. I agree, being around social media sites prejudices you and you think everyone is just interested in a sound bite, a cat video or a two-minute read. It's so easy to get jaundiced and I tend to be easily exasperated. It's really hard to find an on-line forum where you can post, get paid and get some feedback from readers. Steemit used to be like that but it's a mere shadow of what it was.