It's also used in a few other niche instances, like hyphenating a two-word adjective (e.g., a San Francisco–based restaurant). Considering there are significant differences between an em and en dash, it really shouldn't be this hard to type them using only a keyboard. I sincerely ...
The rules of when and where to use which kind of dash may seem complex and hard to understand, but they don't have to. Here's your guide to how to use em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens correctly.
However, we often use it where other, long dash symbols would work better — often because we're not sure how to type long hyphens at all. Sometimes, you can see people typing double (- -) or even triple (- - -) dashes to represent en and em dashes respectively (and some word ...
Inserting an Em Dash using Autocorrect OpenWord Place yourcursorwhere you would like to insert the em dash Typetwo — hyphensin a row PressSpacebar This will automatically change your two hyphens into an em dash Example Then press spacebar after the last word and it will turn into this: ...
using something longer than a hyphen. That said, youshouldstay away from any form of a dash where a hyphen is required. Not only is it grammatically incorrect, but you would want to re—edit what you wrote anyway. Using an em dash or en dash in a compound word just looks plain goofy...
Don’t worry if you’re not quite sure why we used it there as opposed to a hyphen or the other dash. We will get to that in a minute. The other type of dash is the em-dash. This dash is longer than the en-dash and is about the size of the letter M in width. This is h...
Warning:To correctly make an em dash on Word and other word processors,DO NOTuse two consecutive hyphens or a double dash. Two adjacent hyphens (that's two of these, no spaces between them: – -) combine to form anen dash, like this one: –. An en dash looks similar to anem dash,...
1. Emphasizing a Word or Phrase Use an em dash to draw attention to a specific word or phrase, adding emphasis to it within a sentence. Example: “The research findings revealed a substantial improvement in patient outcomes — reduced hospital readmissions and improved quality of life.” ...
Here is a more in-depth look. Using an en dash to indicate spans or ranges The en dash is often used to indicate a period or a range of numbers. In this context, the dash should be interpreted as to or through. Consider the examples below: Reading assignments: “The teacher assigned ...
So there you have it: how to type the en and em dash in any program, using all three major operating systems. I think it's a little crazy that keyboards don't come with a built-in way to type these characters–they're essential to modern English–but it seems a lot about the mode...