Dash it all! The different types of dashes and what they mean

I’m not sure about you, but I didn’t get a lot of punctuation-based education at school. After we covered the basics of full stops (a.k.a. “periods”), exclamation marks and question marks, putting quotation marks around dialogue, and putting commas “where you take a breath”,* my classmates and I were considered to know enough to get by.

It certainly never occurred to me until I hit young adulthood that there were different kinds of dashes with different purposes, and I regret to say that it wasn’t really until I started working as a technical writer that I was able to name the main types and define their proper usage.

In this post, I’m going to cover the three types of dash most likely to vex a writer (or their copyeditor): hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes. There are a few other line-based pieces of punctuation and edge cases of dash usage that I won’t go into here—this is just about the basics.

*This is a terrible way to determine where commas go, especially if you speak disjointedly like William Shatner or in a breathless, hyperfixated deluge like me. I’ve set this misconception straight in my post about commas.

The hyphen: “-”

Hyphens are the dashes that are most commonly known, and probably most commonly used in English. They are also the shortest of the three dashes we’ll be looking at here.

Hyphens are used within a single word, often compound words like “self-management”, or words with awkward prefixes such as “co-opt”. Hyphens might also be used to turn an adjectival phrase into something that is more recognisably functioning as a single word, as in the case of “large, well-defined biceps”. Quite often, the presence or absence of a hyphen can change the meaning of the word(s) in question; for example, “follow-up” can be used as a noun or an adjective, but “follow up” becomes a verb when the hypen is replaced with a space.

The en-dash: “–“

The middle-length dash of our three is the en-dash, so named because it’s supposed to be as long as an “N” is wide. They don’t appear very frequently, or at least not in their intended usage. You often need to insert a special character for en-dashes, as many word-processing programs won’t autocorrect it (though Microsoft Word will if you type a hyphen with a space on either side of it: “ - “).

You’ll want an en-dash specifically for ranges, such as:

• 30–50 puddings
• The years 1941–1973
• Open 1–4 pm

It could also be used to indicate opposed or paired items, as in:

• The French–English conflict
• The All Blacks–Wallabies game

The em-dash: “—”

Last but not least is our longest dash: the em-dash. As you have likely surmised, it is called this because its length matches that of an “M”. When people talk about using a “dash” (as opposed to a “hyphen”), this is probably what they want, in most cases. In many word processors, two hyphens in sequence will autocorrect to an em-dash, though you may need a special character for some programs.

Like our friend the semicolon (which I have written about previously), the em-dash is used to join two clauses in a way that implies some sort of relationship. However, an em-dash is more versatile in that it can be used to join two independent clauses, join an independent clause to a dependent one, or insert a phrase into a sentence. Examples of each:

• I don’t believe in dragons—if they existed, I’d have found them.
  This em-dash functions in the same way as a semicolon, suggesting a logical link between the two halves of the sentence.
• Alas, Sherlock Holmes is dead—or is he?
  This em-dash is used to create a bit of distance between the two clauses, which builds drama.
• I poured a cup of tea—black, with sugar—and sat down to read.
  These em-dashes indicate a short bit of extra detail embedded within the sentence. Such detail might be a definition, a bit of exposition, or some other relevant information.

Em-dashes are also commonly used when attributing quotes, for example: “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”—Douglas Adams.

It’s not a vital matter, getting the dashes right—if your work is going through a copyeditor before publication they will doubtless sort them out as needed, and some publications or organisations might have different conventions for dashes and how they’re used. However, if you’re self-publishing your work without professional proofreading, this is one thing that will affect the way readers perceive its quality. The most important thing, of course, is to use your dashes consistently and deliberately.

If you want to know the shortcuts for en- and em-dashes, check out Wikipedia to find a variety of options depending on your operating system and set-up.

Feel free to ask me any further questions you may have about dashes—my comments await! And, of course, if there’s a topic you’d like me to discuss in future, send me a suggestion.

Happy writing, friends!