![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/2cb0ceedb892f8a28081eec69665168b.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A picture from Jane Austen’s Emma referring to a “Miss —-” Amy Glover \/ HuffPost<\/p>\n
It\u2019s taken me more than a month, but I\u2019ve finally gotten back into the swing<\/a> of reading for fun.<\/p>\n And with 2005\u2032s Pride and Prejudice reaching its 20th anniversary<\/a> (and\u00a0Emerald Fennell<\/a>\u2019s Netflix adaptation of\u00a0Wuthering Heights<\/a>\u00a0well on its way), I\u2019ve returned to an old favourite: folks, she\u2019s back on the Austen.<\/p>\n But a recent scroll of Reddit\u2019s\u00a0r\/janeausten<\/a>\u00a0showed some fellow readers are wondering about a hallmark of the author\u2019s writing\u00a0\u2013 her long, mysterious blanks where people or places\u2019 names should be.<\/p>\n So, we spoke to Cambridge University\u2019s Professor Janet Todd<\/a>, author of the freshly-released\u00a0Living With Jane Austen<\/a>\u00a0(which coincides with Austen\u2019s 250th birthday) and 2006\u2032s The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen<\/a>, about what\u2019s really going on here.<\/p>\n It makes the work seem real<\/strong><\/p>\n Austen is far from the only writer who used the technique.<\/p>\n It appeared in, for instance, Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein (which mentions <\/a>the rather Google Maps-unfriendly \u201ctown of \u2014\u2014\u201d), and showed up in real-life papers of the 19th century too (The Times in 1837<\/a> wrote, \u201cSome time after the party had returned to D\u2015- House, Mrs. C\u2015- discovered that she had lost a very fine boa…\u201d).<\/p>\n Professor Todd says these dashes are \u201ca device to pretend that the story is real.\u201d<\/p>\n It makes the work \u201clook authentic,\u201d as though the author is worried about real people finding themselves unexpectedly represented in her print.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso,\u201d Professor Todd continues, this way the author \u201cavoids referring to a real place or person.\u201d<\/p>\n It likely didn\u2019t hurt that the technique saved Austen \u201cthe trouble of making names up\u201d too.<\/p>\n