How To Use Dashes Grammar

Short dashes technically en dashes aren t as showy as their wider cousins but they re still useful.

How to use dashes grammar. The em dash is the largest of the three kinds of dashes. A dash can be used to add emphasis at the beginning middle or end of a sentence. Dashes can be used for emphasis in several ways. It is usually used as an alternative to another type of punctuation. They insert information into a sentence and introduce lists.

Rather than placing parentheses around a phrase within a statement writers can opt to surround the phrase with an em dash on either end. Both dashes do exactly the same thing. Rules for using dashes. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. To set off material for emphasis.

After eighty years of dreaming the elderly man realized it was time to finally revisit the land of his youth ireland. Those long straight lines draw your eye and hold your attention. An em dash is used to indicate a break in a sentence or question. Us english publications tend to use the longer em dash. But long dashes aren t just show offs.

Which you see most will depend on where what you re reading was originally published. It is used in the same manner as a parenthetical expression. When used to extend a sentence a dash can replace a semicolon a colon or three dots used as a pause for effect. There are three forms of dashes. A single dash can emphasize material at the beginning or end of a sentence.

Spacing with punctuation periods commas semicolons colons question marks parentheses and brackets apostrophes hyphens dashes ellipses quotation marks exclamation points slashes. Use a longer em dash to join independent clauses with words like and but as or and for. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. At emphasis we use the shorter en dash as it s used most extensively in british english and we re based in great britain. Generally speaking the dash does not have a unique role.