How To Use Em Dashes In A Sentence
The em dash in place of a colon.
How to use em dashes in a sentence. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. Em dashes are great. The em dash can be used in place of a colon when you want to emphasize the conclusion of your sentence. To illustrate i m going to reproduce the first sentence of this paragraph but with a. Although colons and commas can serve the same function em dashes create a more dramatic effect.
Once again the em dash adds more emphasis than the traditional punctuation mark. If you know of another way please share in the comments. Use em dashes in place of a semicolon. 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. To do a find and or replace plug the code into either the find what or replace with text boxes to search for or replace with an em dash.
There are three forms of dashes. Em en and the double hyphen. Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder with a dash of the dictionary. They provide variety to your sentence structure plus add style to your writing. In this use em dashes are similar to commas and parentheses but there are subtle differences.
Use a longer em dash to join independent clauses with words like and but as or and for. Use an em dash but use it wisely. Em dashes set apart parenthetical phrases or clauses in a sentence. The dash is less formal than the colon. When a sentence begins with an independent clause and ends with a list you can use a colon between the clause and the list.
It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Em dash is versatile in its own terms it can even take the place of the semicolon. When the list comes first it s better to use a dash to connect the list to the clause. The most common types of dashes are the en dash and the em dash. Take the following sentence as an example.