![]() ![]() In all uses of the en dash, you should be able to substitute the word. But our New York team don’t use it because they prefer the elegance of the en dash. Use an en dash (the shorter dash symbol) to show a range of dates, numbers, or locations. They’re sometimes used instead of en dashes in the US to separate out a phrase (like this: ‘There was no way to make the words better-or was there?’). But sometimes you might need to put one in manually.Įm dashes aren’t used so much in the UK these days. If you type in a hyphen to separate out a phrase within a sentence, Word will generally autocorrect it to an en dash. And for those ranges, don’t forget to take the spaces out from either side of the dash. You can also use a dash on its own to mark a break in a sentence – try it instead of a semicolon.Īlways use an en dash, not a hyphen, in a range like 30–40 (only use dashes if you’re doing a range of figures – use ‘to’ for things like ‘Monday to Friday’). Use an en dash to separate out a phrase within a sentence – perhaps to break up the text, or add emphasis – instead of commas or brackets. So you might say ‘the new car runs on diesel – that classic fuel – and will soon run electrically.’ Or you could say ‘we know you like fresh veg – so we started a garden.’ So we use hyphens to make compound adjectives, things like ‘the wind-powered turbine’.īut you use a dash to make an aside (a parenthetical, in grammar jargon) or a connected sentence. But here’s the big idea: hyphens join up words, while dashes separate sentences or clauses. There is a lot of commentary on which to use, and when. Here’s what they look like, from shortest to longest: The em dash gets its name from being the width of, you guessed it, an ‘m’. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. An en dash gets its name from being the width of an ‘n’ (at least, historically). The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. ![]() A hyphen (which we all know), an en dash and an em dash. ![]() Some style manuals recommend using the en dash for ranges, scores, or values that are related, but the AMA Style Manual reserves them for the hyphenated or compound modifier only.There are three different ‘weights’, or sizes, of a dash. In all of these cases, 2 or more words together represent the single thing (eg, US army, apolipoprotein E), which is your cue to use the en dash before or after the phrase. The em dash is sometimes considered a less formal equivalent of the colon and parenthesis, but in truth it’s used in all kinds of writing, including the most formalthe choice of which mark to use is really a matter of personal preference. estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer.When youre writing about a range between two numbers, use an en dash instead of a hyphen. apolipoprotein E–related genetic susceptibility En dashes are used to indicate numerical ranges.A dash ( or ) is longer and, depending on the type, is used to connect two grammatical units or to signify a range. It is also used to emphasize certain parts of words. a hyphen: A hyphen (-) is shorter and is used in between compound words and numbers. ![]() Geographic Information Systems–based measures Dont use a slash ( / ) where an en dash is Even though the en dash is used for joint authors (SarbanesOxley Act), use a hyphen for compound names. Here’s how you can easily remember the key difference between a dash vs.Then someone explained to me that you use it when a group of words represents a single idea and it started to make sense: I was overthinking it, spending too much time debating what the modifier was, and placing the en dash in the wrong place. I understood how to use it with a hyphenated modifier, but the compound modifier tripped me up. “The en dash shows relational distinction in a hyphenated or compound modifier, 1 element of which consists of 2 words or a hyphenated word, or when the word being modified is a compound.” I knew when to use hyphens and em dashes, but the en dash was so confusing, no matter how many times I read the official description in the AMA Style Manual: Somehow I’d never even noticed them before. I didn’t know what an “en” dash was until I started working as a copy editor. ![]()
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