How To Properly Use Dashes In Writing
Revised on february 11 2020.
How to properly use dashes in writing. Examine these useful hyphen em dash and en dash examples. Em dashes and en dashes vs published on may 31 2019 by amy luo. When the dash is used in this way it creates a compound adjective. Here are some examples. What s the difference between a hyphen and a dash.
The sure fire way of creating an em dash is to use alt and 0151 on the numeric keypad. To properly use a dash in an english sentence start by identifying which dash you should use. The two most common dashes are the em dash and the en dash. There are three types of dashes in writing used to convey different ideas in an engaging way. They can be used on their own or in pairs to offset a word or phrase.
Place em dashes around non essential information or a list in the middle of a sentence like you would with commas. Use a longer em dash to join independent clauses with words like and but as or and for. The en dash may also be used to indicate a connection between two words. So what s the difference. Using the en dash to denote a connection.
Use an en dash when you need to connect terms that are already hyphenated or when you are using a two word phrase as a modifier. Em dashes so called because they are at least historically the width of the character m are used for emphasis or interruption. The en dash is approximately the length of the letter n and the em dash the length of the letter m. Semicolons colons and dashes. After reading the handout you will be better able to decide when to use these forms of punctuation in your own writing.
After we buy toenail clippers the dinosaur in that exhibit could use a trim you know we ll stop at the doughnut shop. The big daddy of dashes the em dash is generally twice as long again as the en dash. Although many people call the hyphen a dash dash refers to another group of horizontal lines in text. Here s a hyphen and here s a dash most of us don t normally type out a dash. In practice many people use hyphens where they need to use dashes.