The em dash ( or - on an old-fashioned typewriter) is the most commonly used type of dash and is often simply referred to as a dash. So you can rest assured that if your favorite team wins the Super Bowl with a final score of 43–8, people probably aren’t going to care which kind of punctuation separates the digits. Creating an en dash can be done by either: ctrl and the minus sign on the numpad or alt 0150 (on the numpad) Em dash.

To signal that someone is speaking with a stutter.īut with date and number ranges, it’s not uncommon to see a hyphen rather than an en dash.

To signal that a word is being spelled out, letter by letter.

To signal that a word is continued on the next line.

You should opt for a hyphen over an en dash in these situations, as well: This includes compound words like old-fashioned and left-handed longer phrases like merry-go-round and run-of-the-mill and numbers like twenty-seven and two-thirds. So does any other instance in which you’re only linking a word to the one directly next to it. HyphenĬhicago-style pizza, on the other hand, needs a hyphen. Since style is modifying New York-not just York-the situation calls for something slightly longer (and therefore stronger) than a hyphen. Instead of September to December and chapters 12 to 16, for instance, you can write September–December and chapters 12–16.Įn dashes also come in handy when you’re linking modifiers with open compound words, like New York–style pizza. Īn en dash, meanwhile, connects words or numbers that designate a range or score, often replacing the word to. “What’s that you have for me? It looks like a-,” I said, stopping suddenly as I realized the creature clutched between my cat’s jaws was my son’s pet hamster. Īnd to signify that someone got cut off in the middle of a thought or sentence, as in: “Thank you for the mangled mouse corpse!” -Me, to my cat. My cat-not the same one who delivers me dead animals-loves to drown toys in her water bowl.Īs Merriam-Webster explains, em dashes are also used for quote attribution, like so: Īn em dash can also set apart an aside that you might otherwise distinguish with commas or parentheses. My cat has a pretty revolting habit that I wish she’d break- bringing me dead animals. It can take the place of a semicolon, colon, or comma if you’re trying to introduce a new clause with slightly more emphasis or drama. When to use an em dash instead of some other punctuation mark is largely up to you. It’s longer than an en dash-just like the elements you’re separating. If the answer is the former, go with an em dash. In general, a good way to remember whether you need an em dash or an en dash is to ask yourself some version of this question: Are you trying to separate whole parts of a sentence, or link individual terms together? That said, unless they’re all lined up next to each other, it’s not always easy to identify which one you’re looking at, so it helps to have a handle on which contexts call for which little line. As its name suggests, an em dash (-) is roughly the length of the letter M, while an en dash (–) more closely matches an N. To insert an em dash, click where you want to insert the em dash and then press Ctrl + Alt + (minus sign on the numeric keypad). Insert an em or en dash using Ctrl and keyboard shortcuts. An en dash is a midsize dash (longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash) that is mostly used to show ranges in numbers and dates. You can blame that difficulty at least partially on how similar they look. In Word, there are two tabs at the top of the dialog box.

But even that can’t compare to the puzzle of picking the right kind of dash or hyphen to drop into a sentence. The semicolon-vs.-colon decision is a bit tougher to make. The professor's hypothesis-though rejected by scholars-actually had merit.When it comes to proper punctuation, choosing between an exclamation point and a question mark is child’s play.Do not place spaces before or after the dashes: The em dash is the longest and denotes an abrupt change, interruption, or emphatic phrase.

For those that don't, use two hyphens to represent an em dash, and a hyphen to represent an en dash. Most document creation programs have em and en dashes available. For our purposes here, there are three types to know: the em dash, the en dash, and the hyphen. There are several types of dashes, each with specific uses.

En dash