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. I had to figure this out.

What is the difference?

-             hyphen
–            n-dash (or en-dash)
—           m-dash (or em-dash)

Typing the n-dash or m-dash in Microsoft Word

En-dash:

automatically created in Word when you type “something – something” (word-space-hyphen-space-word).

Em-dash:

automatically created in Word when you type “something–something” (word-hyphen-hyphen-word).

For more details, see my post about inserting the n-dash or m-dash in Microsoft Word.

When to use a hyphen, en-dash or em-dash: Examples

Hyphen

• Indicates breaks within words that wrap at the end of a line.
• Connects compounded words like “mass-produced”. (Closed compound words like counterintuitive have no hyphen in modern English, except for uncommon combinations that are confusing or ambiguous without a hyphen.)
• Connects grouped numbers, like a phone number 555-860-5086 (but not used for a range of numbers, like a date range).

En-dash

• Joins numbers in a range, such as
  “1993–99” or
  “1200–1400 B.C.” or
  “pages 32–37” or
  open-ended ranges, like “1934–”.
• Joins words that describe a range, like “July–October 2010”.

Em-dash

• Works better than commas to set-apart a unique idea from the main clause of a sentence:

“Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.”

• Separates an inserted thought or clause from the main clause, such as:

“I can’t believe how pedantic Ken is about writing—I mean, doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

“Hunter strode into the room—was he mad?—and the family stopped and stared.”

“Computers make everyday punctuation—for reasons that we’ll discuss later—more precise yet more confusing.”

• Shows when dialogue has been interrupted:

“I reached in and pulled the spray can out of my pants—”
“In front of the police?”

Break the rules!

Lots of people prefer the way the ‘space-en-dash-space’ looks on a page, and it is used in lots of magazines and papers as a replacement for the proper use of the em-dash.

Sometimes when you submit writing that uses the em-dash people say, “What is that? I don’t like that big long dash thing.”

It is no big deal.

I generally use ‘space-en-dash-space’ instead of the em-dash – just to keep everyone happy.

Trivia about dashes, for writing geeks

Why don’t educated English-speaking people use dashes correctly? Did we all skip the same grade-5 English class?

No. Computers have changed the way we use punctuation.

These dashes go back to an earlier era of printing. The n-dash is named for its width in typesetting (when people used little metal blocks that imprinted each character): The en-dash was as wide as an upper-case N. The m-dash was as wide as an M.

Later, in the days of the typewriter, there was only the hyphen; this is still the only sort of dash on a normal keyboard (just to the left of that ‘backspace’ key). Using a typewriter, you had to use two dashes for the m-dash and ‘space-hyphen-space’ as a rough replacement for the n-dash.

BUT in books, magazines and other ‘proper’ printing, typesetters have always used the ‘proper’ dashes.

Computers brought this level of precision and flexibility to everyone. Now we can all use dashes and other ‘non-basic’ punctuation with similar detail as a professional printing typesetter, and programs like Word make this possible without anyone even thinking about it very much at all. (Professional designers think Word is awful, but it works fine for most people.)

For info about using this punctuation online, see my post about using the n-dash or m-dash in a web page or blog.