The difference between a dash and a minus sign
A reader asked about the difference between a minus symbol and an N-dash (thanks Tem). I had to do a bit of homework on this. Unicode (the standard for electronically encoding text information) has separate encoding for the minus sign, hyphen and N-dash. Below you can compare… Symbol hyphen minus sign N-dash M-dash – − [...]
Using the semicolon with conjunctive adverbs like ‘however’
Using words like ‘however’ (a conjunctive adverb) within a sentence sometimes seems clunky and can make sentences hard to read. This is a clear explanation of using a semicolon to solve this problem.
Insert an n-dash or m-dash on a web page or blog
Using the n-dash and m-dash when you are creating a webpage or a blog post can seem confusing, but really it is quite easy and you don’t need to be an HTML genius to do it…
Quickly insert an n-dash or m-dash in Microsoft Word
It is easy to use the n-dash and m-dash in Microsoft Word. You’ve probably noticed that they get inserted automatically sometimes: Here’s how it works…
The hyphen, dash, n-dash and m-dash
In lots of writing, the use of dashes is very inconsistent – regardless of how ‘professional’ the writers are.
The hyphen, dash, n-dash and m-dash crop-up all the time in Microsoft Word but most of us don’t know why, and we use them inconsistently. The fact is that the n-dash and m-dash are very useful and easy to use – whether you follow the rules or break them (but it’s best to break rules consistently).
Should I use punctuation after a URL?
When you write a web address at the end of a sentence, should you follow it with punctuation, or use no punctuation (to help avoid breaking the web link)?