How To Use Long Dashes
It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause.
How to use long dashes. A long dash s primary job is to tell the reader that you ve jumped tracks onto a new though related subject just for a moment. Em dash symbol em dash alt code. To whom it may concern. It is wider than an en dash or a hyphen. So is the em dash more often called the long dash or sometimes just the dash.
The hyphen the em dash and the en dash are the straight arrows among punctuation marks an otherwise fairly curvaceous lot. Conversely use a shorter en dash to indicate a range of numbers like 10 15. The long dash is the widest of the three horizontal marks that may be used in the middle of a sentence. An em dash can replace commas parentheses and colons. Em dash shortcut windows ctrl alt minus on numeric keypad em dash shortcut mac command m.
What is an em dash and when should you use it. The hyphen the shortest of the three marks is familiar sometimes wretchedly so to most writers. How to use an em dash an em dash or long dash is used. Here are some examples. The term em dash comes from the field of typography an em is a width equivalent to the height of a given font.
Typically you shouldn t include a space before or after the em dash. Dashes are often used to signal an abrupt change in a sentence. Use a longer em dash to join independent clauses with words like and but as or and for. To properly use a dash in an english sentence start by identifying which dash you should use. Using a colon between a verb and its object or complement.
Thousands of children like the girl in this photograph have been left homeless. After we buy toenail clippers the dinosaur in that exhibit could use a trim you know we ll stop at the doughnut shop. Long dashes in writing. When a comma or colon isn t enough or you want to avoid using parentheses the em dash may be the punctuation mark for you. In pairs to mark off information or ideas that are not essential to an understanding of the rest of the sentence.