When And How To Use Dashes
When a range with en dash falls at the.
When and how to use dashes. Alternatively you can use alt with numeric keys 0150. Examples include conflicting sides of an argument democrat republican debate connecting a prefix or suffix to an unhyphenated compound post civil war new york based and directional references los angeles san diego bus east west highway. When used to extend a sentence a dash can replace a semicolon a colon or three dots used as a pause for effect. Rather than placing parentheses around a phrase within a statement writers can opt to surround the phrase with an em dash on either end. A good way to remember the difference between these two dashes is to visualize the en dash as the length of the letter n and the em dash as the length of the letter m.
It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. This is a symbol for typing dash. Experienced writers know that these marks are not interchangeable. An en dash is most commonly used to indicate a range of numbers like pages 182 197 in a book or an event happening from 1 p m 5 p m. You are the friend the only friend who offered to help me.
Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. Dashes can be used for emphasis in several ways. An em dash is used to indicate a break in a sentence or question. A dash can be used to add emphasis at the beginning middle or end of a sentence. When used as parentheses dashes are alternatives to brackets or commas.
A single dash can emphasize material at the beginning or end of a sentence. There are three forms of dashes. Note how dashes subtly change the tone of the following sentences. Dashes like commas semicolons colons ellipses and parentheses indicate added emphasis an interruption or an abrupt change of thought. Here are some examples.
The most common types of dashes are the en dash and the em dash. In order to use this dash sign you have to press control and key in the numeric keypad. The em dash is the largest of the three kinds of dashes. Em en and the double hyphen. After eighty years of dreaming the elderly man realized it was time to finally revisit the land of his youth ireland.