Dash It All!
Dashes are one of the most useful and often misused bits of punctuation. Traditionally they just set off a parenthetical statement—just like parenthesis or commas—but they’re also used to create a pause in conversational pose or to show as shift in stream of consciousness. I see a lot of dashes used too casually or incorrectly, so I’m going to talk about the right way to use them.
First of all, a dash is not a hyphen. Hyphens are only used for forming some kinds of compounds, generally used as adjectives or nouns. Examples include tight-lipped, half-hour and city-state. Hyphens are also placed by typesetters where part of a long word must be continued on the next line.
There are two kinds of dashes. The en dash, so called because it is the width of a letter N, connects numbers or places; generally, it means the same as the word to or though. 25–30, or Paris–London are examples.
The em dash, the longest and most versatile dash, joins and separates parts of sentences. They can be used where other punctuation won’t do, indicating a sudden break, introducing an aside or separating a subject and its pronoun in the same sentence. The em dash—flexible as it is—is useful, but has potential for misuse. Insert em dashes sparingly—no more than twice in a single sentence—to avoid confusion. Don’t use them where another punctuation mark makes more sense; in this sentence, many writers would use a dash, but a semicolon is more appropriate.
Microsoft Word can automatically insert a dash where a writer puts a hyphen to indicate that one is necessary. However, it doesn’t always detect one properly, or the feature may be disabled. This accounts for a lot of the misused hyphens I come across. If Word isn’t automatically inserting your dashes, you can do it manually. In the menu bar, click Insert > Symbol… to bring up a character palette. You can select and insert an en or em dash here, in addition to a number of other special characters.
If you have trouble remembering which is which, go by the length: a short hyphen combines words, but a longer dash combines groups of words. This simple rule will help you keep your writing both easy to understand and formally correct.
First of all, a dash is not a hyphen. Hyphens are only used for forming some kinds of compounds, generally used as adjectives or nouns. Examples include tight-lipped, half-hour and city-state. Hyphens are also placed by typesetters where part of a long word must be continued on the next line.
There are two kinds of dashes. The en dash, so called because it is the width of a letter N, connects numbers or places; generally, it means the same as the word to or though. 25–30, or Paris–London are examples.
The em dash, the longest and most versatile dash, joins and separates parts of sentences. They can be used where other punctuation won’t do, indicating a sudden break, introducing an aside or separating a subject and its pronoun in the same sentence. The em dash—flexible as it is—is useful, but has potential for misuse. Insert em dashes sparingly—no more than twice in a single sentence—to avoid confusion. Don’t use them where another punctuation mark makes more sense; in this sentence, many writers would use a dash, but a semicolon is more appropriate.
Microsoft Word can automatically insert a dash where a writer puts a hyphen to indicate that one is necessary. However, it doesn’t always detect one properly, or the feature may be disabled. This accounts for a lot of the misused hyphens I come across. If Word isn’t automatically inserting your dashes, you can do it manually. In the menu bar, click Insert > Symbol… to bring up a character palette. You can select and insert an en or em dash here, in addition to a number of other special characters.
If you have trouble remembering which is which, go by the length: a short hyphen combines words, but a longer dash combines groups of words. This simple rule will help you keep your writing both easy to understand and formally correct.
posted by Kevin at
1:24 PM
1 Comments:
Yesterday my technology-challenged mother asked me "How do put in dashes?" I asked her what she was talking about. It turns out she was trying to enter dashes in the phone number she was trying to save on her cell phone. I eventually correctly convinced her that she doesn't need to (and can't) include dashes when entering a number. THE cutest.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home