Dash
Encyclopedia
A dash is one of several kinds of punctuation
mark. Dashes appear similar to hyphen
s, but differ from them primarily in length, and serve different functions. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash (–) and the em dash (—).
Less common are the two-em dash and three-em dash . Windows character codes require that be on.
s with digits of equal width. This is true of most fonts, not only monospaced fonts.
The figure dash is used when a dash must be used within numbers. This does not indicate a range, for which the en dash is used; nor does it function as the minus sign, which also uses a separate glyph.
The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode
, the figure dash is (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms
, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be substituted when using standard TeX fonts.
In modern fonts, the length of the en dash is not standardized, and the en dash is often more than half the width of the em dash. The widths of en and em dashes have also been specified as being equal to those of the upper-case letters N and M respectively,
and at other times to the widths of the lower-case letters.
The Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI
) recommends that the word to be used instead of an en dash when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, such as a range of units. For example, "a voltage of 50 V to 100 V" is preferable to using "a voltage of 50–100 V". It is also considered inappropriate to use the en dash in place of the words to or and in phrases that follow the forms from ... to ... and between ... and ....
A "simple" attributive compound is written with a hyphen; at least one authority considers name pairs, where the paired elements carry equal weight, as in the Taft-Hartley Act
to be "simple," while others consider an en dash appropriate in instances such as this
to represent the parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill or Bose–Einstein statistics
. However, truly compound names are written with a hyphen, thus the Lennard-Jones potential
is named after one person, while Bose
and Einstein are two people.
in compound (phrasal) attributives
in which one or both elements is itself a compound, especially when the compound element is an open compound, meaning it is not hyphenated itself. This manner of usage may include such examples as:
(the connection between the hospital and the nursing home, not a home connection between the hospital and nursing)
The disambiguating value of the en dash in these patterns was illustrated by Strunk and White in The Elements of Style
with the following example: when Chattanooga News and Chattanooga Free Press merged, the joint company was inaptly named Chattanooga News-Free Press, which could be interpreted as meaning that their newspapers were news-free.
An exception to the use of en dashes is made however when prefix
ing an already hyphenated compound; an en dash is generally avoided as a distraction in this case. Examples of this may include:
(CMOS), however, limits the use of the en dash to two main purposes. First, use it to indicate ranges of time, money, or other amounts, or in certain other cases where it replaces the word to. Second, use it in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound, or when two or more of its elements are compounds, open or hyphenated. That is, it favors hyphens in instances where some other guides suggest en dashes – the 16th edition explaining that "Chicago's sense of the en dash does not extend to between" to rule out its use in "US-Canadian relations."
s not including the en dash character—it may be substituted with a hyphen-minus with a single space on each side (" - ").
, the en dash may normally (depending on the font) be input as a double hyphen-minus (
, most keyboard layout
s map an en dash to . On Microsoft Windows
, an en dash may be entered as Alt+0150 (where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding down the Alt key). In Linux
(GTK+ v. 2.10+ applications only, see Unicode input
), it is entered by holding down Ctrl+Shift and typing U followed by the Unicode code point above, or using the compose key
by pressing the compose key, two hyphens, and a period.
The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign, when the minus sign character is not available, since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign. For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh character set had an en dash, useful for minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. But the en dash cannot be used for a minus in programming language
s because the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus; because programming languages are usually set in a fixed-pitch (monospaced
) font face, the hyphen-minus looks acceptable there.
used at the start of items in a list.
's The Mezzanine
:
It is also used to indicate that a sentence is unfinished because the speaker has been interrupted. For example, the em dash is used in the following way in Joseph Heller
's Catch-22
:
Similarly, it can be used instead of an ellipsis
to indicate aposiopesis
, the rhetorical device
by which a sentence is stopped short not because of interruption but because the speaker is too emotional to continue, such as Darth Vader
's line "I sense something; a presence I've not felt since—" in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
.
The term em dash derives from its defined width of one em
, which is the length, expressed in point
s, by which font sizes are typically specified. Thus in 9-point type, an em is 9 points wide, while the em of 24-point type is 24 points wide, and so on (by comparison, the en dash, with its 1-en
width, is in most fonts
either ½ em wide or the width of an n).
The em dash is used in much the way a colon
or a set of parentheses is used; it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop
(or "period") is too strong and a comma
too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used to set off summaries or definitions.
According to most American sources (such as The Chicago Manual of Style
) and some British sources (such as The Oxford Guide to Style
), an em dash should always be set closed, meaning it should not be surrounded by spaces. But the practice in some parts of the English-speaking world, including the style recommended by The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
, sets it open, separating it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A) when it is being used parenthetically. Some writers, finding the em dash unappealingly long, prefer to use an open-set en dash. This "space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in German and French typography
. See En dash versus em dash below.
In Canada, The Canadian Style [A Guide to Writing and Editing], The Oxford Canadian of Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation, Guide to Canadian English Usage [Second Edition], Editing Canadian English Manual, and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary all specify that an em dash should be set closed when used between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals.
In Australia, the Style manual [For authors, editors and printers, Sixth edition], also specifies that em dashes inserted between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals, should be set closed. A section on the 2-em rule (——) also explains that the 2-em can be used to mark an abrupt break in direct or reported speech, but a space is used before the 2-em if a complete word is missing, while no space is used if part of a word exists before the sudden break. Two examples of this are as follows (note that properly typeset 2-em and 3-em dashes should appear as a single dash, but they may show on this page as several em dashes with spaces in between):
Monospaced fonts that mimic the look of a typewriter have the same width for all characters. Some of these fonts have em and en dashes that more or less fill the monospaced width they have available. For example, the sequence hyphen, en dash, em dash, minus shows as "
When an actual em dash is unavailable—as in the ASCII character set—a double ("-- ") or triple hyphen-minus ("--- ") is used. In Unicode, the em dash is U+2014 (decimal 8212). In HTML, one may use the numeric forms
, most keyboard layouts map an em dash to . On Microsoft Windows, an em dash may be entered as Alt+0151, where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding the Alt key down. It can also be entered into Microsoft Office applications by using the . In the X Window System
, it may entered using the compose key
by pressing the compose key and three hyphens.
Corpus
studies indicate that em dashes are more commonly used in Russian than in English.
but not as wide as the em dash. An em width is defined as the point size of the currently used font, since the M character is not always the width of the point size. In running text, various dash conventions are employed: an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — or a spaced en dash – like so – can be seen in contemporary publications.
Various style guides and national varieties of languages prescribe different guidance on dashes. Dashes have been cited as being treated differently in the US and the UK, with the former preferring the use of an em-dash with no additional spacing, and the latter preferring a spaced en-dash. As an example of the US style, The Chicago Manual of Style
still recommends unspaced em dashes. Style guides outside of the US tend to diverge from this guidance. For example, the Canadian The Elements of Typographic Style
recommends the spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash "belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography."
In the United Kingdom, the spaced en dash is the house style for certain major publishers, including the Penguin Group
, the Cambridge University Press
, and Routledge
. But this convention is not universal. The Oxford Guide to Style
(2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that the spaced en dash is used by "other British publishers", but states that the Oxford University Press—like "most US publishers"—uses the unspaced em dash.
The en dash—always with spaces in running text—and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the un-spaced em dash. Most typesetting and word processing expects word spacing to vary to support full justification
. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words it falls between. This can cause uneven spacing in the text, but can be mitigated by the use of thin spaces, hair spaces, or even zero-width space
s on the sides of the em dash. This provides the appearance of an unspaced em dash, but allows the words and dashes to break between lines. The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words further exaggerated. En dashes may also be preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns, such as in newspapers and similar publications, as the en dash is smaller. In such cases, its use is based purely on space considerations and is not necessarily related to other typographical concerns.
in some languages. See the quotation dash section of the Quotation mark, non-English usage
article for further details of how it is used. The em dash is equally suitable if the quotation dash is unavailable or is contrary to the house style being used.
There is no support in the standard TeX fonts, but one can use
The Chicago Manual of Style
makes no mention of the horizontal bar or the quotation dash but states: "Em dashes are occasionally used instead of quotation marks to set off dialogue (à la writers in some European languages). Each speech starts a new paragraph. No space follows the dash."
, and is used to separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries
, it is frequently used to stand in for the term being defined. A dictionary entry providing an example for the term henceforth might employ the swung dash as follows:
There are several similar, related characters:, used in mathematics. In TeX
and LaTeX
, this character can be expressed using the math mode command
hyphen. Sometimes this is used in groups to indicate different types of dash. is a diacritic
mark. is either a diacritic mark, or a character replacing a standard space. is another diacritic mark. is used to indicate where a line may break, as in a compound word
or between syllables. is the character that can be used to unambiguously represent a hyphen. is a short horizontal line used as a list bullet
., and several similar characters from the same Unicode block. is an arithmetic
operation
used in mathematics
to represent subtraction
or negative numbers. and are wavy lines found in some East Asian character sets. Typographically, they have the width of one CJK
character cell (fullwidth form), and follow the direction of the text, being horizontal for horizontal text, and vertical for columnar. They are used as dashes, and occasionally as emphatic variants of the katakana
vowel extender mark. is a hyphen from the Mongolian Todo alphabet. or are Hangul
letters used in Korean
to denote the sound [ɨ]., the Japanese chōonpu
, is used in Japanese to indicate a long vowel., the Chinese character for "one", is used in various East Asian languages.
set, often having no key that produces a dash. In consequence, it became common to substitute the nearest available punctuation mark or symbol. Em dashes are often represented in British usage by a single hyphen-minus surrounded by spaces, or in American usage by two hyphen-minuses surrounded by spaces.
Modern computer software typically has support for many more characters, and is usually capable of rendering both the en and em dashes correctly—albeit sometimes with an inconvenient input method. Some software, though, may operate in a more limited mode. Some text editors, for example, are restricted to working with a single 8-bit character encoding
, and when unencodable characters are entered—for example by pasting from the clipboard—they are often blindly converted to question marks. Sometimes this happens to em and en dashes, even when the 8-bit encoding supports them, or when an alternative representation using hyphen-minuses is an option.
Any kind of dash can be used directly in an HTML
document, but HTML also lets them be entered using character references. The em dash and the en dash are special in that they can be written using character entity reference
s as
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...
mark. Dashes appear similar to hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
s, but differ from them primarily in length, and serve different functions. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash (–) and the em dash (—).
Common dashes
There are several forms of dash, of which the most common are:| glyph Glyph A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes.... |
Unicode Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems... codepoint |
HTML HTML HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages.... character entity reference Character entity reference In the markup languages SGML, HTML, XHTML and XML, a character entity reference is a reference to a particular kind of named entity that has been predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition . The "replacement text" of the entity consists of a single character from the Universal... |
HTML/XML XML Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards.... numeric character reference Numeric character reference A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode... s |
TeX TeX TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as .... |
Alt code (Windows) | Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems... key combination |
Compose key Compose key A compose key, available on some computer keyboards, is a special kind of modifier key designated to signal the software to interpret the following sequence of two keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found directly on the keyboard... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| figure dash | U+2012 | none | ‒ or ‒ |
none | ||||
| en dash | – | U+2013 | – |
– or – |
-- |
+ 0150 | ||
| em dash | — | U+2014 | — |
— or — |
--- |
+ 0151 | ||
| horizontal bar | ― | U+2015 | none | ― or ― |
none | |||
| swung dash | ⁓ | U+2053 | none | ⁓ or ⁓ |
\~{} |
Less common are the two-em dash and three-em dash . Windows character codes require that be on.
Figure dash
The figure dash is so named because it is the same width as a digit, at least in fontFont
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
s with digits of equal width. This is true of most fonts, not only monospaced fonts.
The figure dash is used when a dash must be used within numbers. This does not indicate a range, for which the en dash is used; nor does it function as the minus sign, which also uses a separate glyph.
The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, the figure dash is (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms
‒ or ‒ to type it unless the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity. In TeXTeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be substituted when using standard TeX fonts.
En dash
The en dash, n dash, n-rule, or "nut" (–) is traditionally half the width of an em dash.In modern fonts, the length of the en dash is not standardized, and the en dash is often more than half the width of the em dash. The widths of en and em dashes have also been specified as being equal to those of the upper-case letters N and M respectively,
and at other times to the widths of the lower-case letters.
Ranges of values
The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range of values, meaning a range with clearly defined and non-infinite upper and lower boundaries. This may include ranges such as those between dates, times, or numbers. Examples of this usage may include:- June–July 1967
- 1:00–2:00 p.m.
- For ages 3–5
- pp. 38–55
- President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)
The Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI
Si
Si, si, or SI may refer to :- Measurement, mathematics and science :* International System of Units , the modern international standard version of the metric system...
) recommends that the word to be used instead of an en dash when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, such as a range of units. For example, "a voltage of 50 V to 100 V" is preferable to using "a voltage of 50–100 V". It is also considered inappropriate to use the en dash in place of the words to or and in phrases that follow the forms from ... to ... and between ... and ....
Relationships and connections
The en dash can also be used to contrast values, or illustrate a relationship between two things. Examples of this usage may include:- Colombia beat Venezuela 31–0.
- Radical–Unionist coalition
- Boston–Hartford route
- New York–London flight (however, it may be seen that New York to London flight is more appropriate because New York is a single name composed of two valid words; with a dash the phrase is ambiguous and could mean either Flight from New York to London or New flight from York to London)
- Mother–daughter relationship
- The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.
- The McCain–Feingold bill
A "simple" attributive compound is written with a hyphen; at least one authority considers name pairs, where the paired elements carry equal weight, as in the Taft-Hartley Act
Taft-Hartley Act
The Labor–Management Relations Act is a United States federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. and became law by overriding U.S. President Harry S...
to be "simple," while others consider an en dash appropriate in instances such as this
to represent the parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill or Bose–Einstein statistics
Bose–Einstein statistics
In statistical mechanics, Bose–Einstein statistics determines the statistical distribution of identical indistinguishable bosons over the energy states in thermal equilibrium.-Concept:...
. However, truly compound names are written with a hyphen, thus the Lennard-Jones potential
Lennard-Jones potential
The Lennard-Jones potential is a mathematically simple model that approximates the interaction between a pair of neutral atoms or molecules. A form of the potential was first proposed in 1924 by John Lennard-Jones...
is named after one person, while Bose
Satyendra Nath Bose
Satyendra Nath Bose FRS was an Indian mathematician and physicist noted for his collaboration with Albert Einstein in developing a theory regarding the gaslike qualities of electromagnetic radiation. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation...
and Einstein are two people.
Attributive compounds
In English, the en dash is usually used instead of a hyphenHyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
in compound (phrasal) attributives
Adjectival phrase
The term adjectival phrase, adjective phrase, or sometimes phrasal adjective may refer to any one of three types of grammatical phrase....
in which one or both elements is itself a compound, especially when the compound element is an open compound, meaning it is not hyphenated itself. This manner of usage may include such examples as:
- The hospital–nursing home connection
(the connection between the hospital and the nursing home, not a home connection between the hospital and nursing)
- A nursing home–home care policy
- Pre–Civil War era
- Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize for FictionThe Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
–winning novel - The non–San Francisco part of the world
- The post–World War II era (however, a hyphen would be used in post-war era)
- Trans–New Guinea languages
- The ex–prime minister
- The pro-conscription–anti-conscription debate
- Public-school–private-school rivalries
The disambiguating value of the en dash in these patterns was illustrated by Strunk and White in The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
with the following example: when Chattanooga News and Chattanooga Free Press merged, the joint company was inaptly named Chattanooga News-Free Press, which could be interpreted as meaning that their newspapers were news-free.
An exception to the use of en dashes is made however when prefix
Prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...
ing an already hyphenated compound; an en dash is generally avoided as a distraction in this case. Examples of this may include:
- non-English-speaking air traffic controllers
- semi-labor-intensive industries
- Proto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
language (rarely Proto–Indo-European) - The post-MS-DOSMS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
era (rarely post–MS-DOS) - non-government-owned corporations
Differing recommendations
As discussed above, the en dash is sometimes recommended instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives where neither part of the adjective modifies the other—that is, when each modifies the noun, as in love–hate relationship. The Chicago Manual of StyleThe Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
(CMOS), however, limits the use of the en dash to two main purposes. First, use it to indicate ranges of time, money, or other amounts, or in certain other cases where it replaces the word to. Second, use it in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound, or when two or more of its elements are compounds, open or hyphenated. That is, it favors hyphens in instances where some other guides suggest en dashes – the 16th edition explaining that "Chicago's sense of the en dash does not extend to between" to rule out its use in "US-Canadian relations."
Spacing
En dashes normally do not have spaces around them. An exception is made when avoiding spaces may cause confusion or look odd. For example, compare 12 June – 3 July with 12 June–3 July. However, in rare situations when an en dash is unavailable—such as when using typewriters or character encodingCharacter encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
s not including the en dash character—it may be substituted with a hyphen-minus with a single space on each side (" - ").
Parenthetic and other uses at the sentence level
Like em dashes, en dashes can be used instead of colons, or pairs of commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. They can also be used around parenthetical expressions – such as this one – in place of the em dashes preferred by some publishers, particularly where short columns are used, since em dashes can look awkward at the end of a line. See En dash versus em dash, below. In these situations, en dashes must have a single space on each side.Electronic usage
In TeXTeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
, the en dash may normally (depending on the font) be input as a double hyphen-minus (
-- Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, most keyboard layout
Keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
s map an en dash to . On Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, an en dash may be entered as Alt+0150 (where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding down the Alt key). In Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
(GTK+ v. 2.10+ applications only, see Unicode input
Unicode input
Unicode input is the insertion of a specific Unicode character on a computer. Unicode characters can be inserted in two ways: from the screen by means of an applet from which one can select the character, or by input of the Unicode character from the keyboard...
), it is entered by holding down Ctrl+Shift and typing U followed by the Unicode code point above, or using the compose key
Compose key
A compose key, available on some computer keyboards, is a special kind of modifier key designated to signal the software to interpret the following sequence of two keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found directly on the keyboard...
by pressing the compose key, two hyphens, and a period.
The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign, when the minus sign character is not available, since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign. For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh character set had an en dash, useful for minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. But the en dash cannot be used for a minus in programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s because the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus; because programming languages are usually set in a fixed-pitch (monospaced
Monospace font
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space...
) font face, the hyphen-minus looks acceptable there.
Itemization mark
The en dash may be used as a bullet markBullet (typography)
In typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list. For example:*Item 1*Item 2*Item 3...
used at the start of items in a list.
Em dash
The em dash (—), m dash, m-rule, or "mutton," often demarcates a break of thought or some similar interpolation stronger than the interpolation demarcated by parentheses, such as the following from Nicholson BakerNicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist, he often focuses on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness, and has written about such provocative topics as voyeurism and planned assassination...
's The Mezzanine
The Mezzanine
The Mezzanine is a first novel by Nicholson Baker about what goes through a man's mind during a modern lunch break.-Plot introduction:...
:
At that age I once stabbed my best friend, Fred, with a pair of pinking shears in the base of the neck, enraged because he had been given the comprehensive sixty-four-crayon Crayola box—including the gold and silver crayons—and would not let me look closely at the box to see how Crayola had stabilized the built-in crayon sharpener under the tiers of crayons.
It is also used to indicate that a sentence is unfinished because the speaker has been interrupted. For example, the em dash is used in the following way in Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
's Catch-22
Catch-22
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
:
He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was the miracle ingredient Z-147. He was—
"Crazy!" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. "That's what you are! Crazy!"
"—immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman."
Similarly, it can be used instead of an ellipsis
Ellipsis
Ellipsis is a series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence...
to indicate aposiopesis
Aposiopesis
Aposiopesis is a figure of speech wherein a sentence is deliberately broken off and left unfinished, the ending to be supplied by the imagination, giving an impression of unwillingness or inability to continue. An example would be the threat "Get out, or else—!" This device often portrays its...
, the rhetorical device
Rhetorical device
In rhetoric, a rhetorical device or resource of language is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective. While rhetorical devices may be used to evoke an...
by which a sentence is stopped short not because of interruption but because the speaker is too emotional to continue, such as Darth Vader
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a central character in the Star Wars saga, appearing as one of the main antagonists in the original trilogy and as the main protagonist in the prequel trilogy....
's line "I sense something; a presence I've not felt since—" in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
.
The term em dash derives from its defined width of one em
Em (typography)
An em is a unit of measurement in the field of typography, equal to the currently specified point size.The name of em is related to M. Originally the unit was derived from the width of the capital "M" in the given typeface....
, which is the length, expressed in point
Point (typography)
In typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure, being a subdivision of the larger pica. It is commonly abbreviated as pt. The point has long been the usual unit for measuring font size and leading and other minute items on a printed page....
s, by which font sizes are typically specified. Thus in 9-point type, an em is 9 points wide, while the em of 24-point type is 24 points wide, and so on (by comparison, the en dash, with its 1-en
En (typography)
An en is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. By definition, it is equivalent to half of the height of the font . As its name suggests, it is also traditionally the width of a lowercase letter "n"....
width, is in most fonts
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
either ½ em wide or the width of an n).
The em dash is used in much the way a colon
Colon (punctuation)
The colon is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.-Usage:A colon informs the reader that what follows the mark proves, explains, or lists elements of what preceded the mark....
or a set of parentheses is used; it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop
Full stop
A full stop is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of sentences. In American English, the term used for this punctuation is period. In the 21st century, it is often also called a dot by young people...
(or "period") is too strong and a comma
Comma (punctuation)
The comma is a punctuation mark. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight but inclined from the vertical, or...
too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used to set off summaries or definitions.
According to most American sources (such as The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
) and some British sources (such as The Oxford Guide to Style
Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press...
), an em dash should always be set closed, meaning it should not be surrounded by spaces. But the practice in some parts of the English-speaking world, including the style recommended by The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's Most Authoritative Newspaper is a style guide created in 1950 by editors at the newspaper and revised in 1974 and 1999 by Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. The revised and...
, sets it open, separating it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A) when it is being used parenthetically. Some writers, finding the em dash unappealingly long, prefer to use an open-set en dash. This "space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in German and French typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
. See En dash versus em dash below.
In Canada, The Canadian Style [A Guide to Writing and Editing], The Oxford Canadian of Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation, Guide to Canadian English Usage [Second Edition], Editing Canadian English Manual, and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary all specify that an em dash should be set closed when used between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals.
In Australia, the Style manual [For authors, editors and printers, Sixth edition], also specifies that em dashes inserted between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals, should be set closed. A section on the 2-em rule (——) also explains that the 2-em can be used to mark an abrupt break in direct or reported speech, but a space is used before the 2-em if a complete word is missing, while no space is used if part of a word exists before the sudden break. Two examples of this are as follows (note that properly typeset 2-em and 3-em dashes should appear as a single dash, but they may show on this page as several em dashes with spaces in between):
- I distinctly heard him say, 'Go away or I'll ——'.
- It was alleged that D—— had been threatened with blackmail.
Monospaced fonts that mimic the look of a typewriter have the same width for all characters. Some of these fonts have em and en dashes that more or less fill the monospaced width they have available. For example, the sequence hyphen, en dash, em dash, minus shows as "
- – — −" in a monospace font. Typewriters often only have a single hyphen glyph, so it is common to use two monospace hyphens strung together (--) to serve as an em dash.When an actual em dash is unavailable—as in the ASCII character set—a double ("
— or —; there is also the HTML entity —. In TeX, the em dash may normally be input as a triple hyphen-minus (--- Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
, most keyboard layouts map an em dash to . On Microsoft Windows, an em dash may be entered as Alt+0151, where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding the Alt key down. It can also be entered into Microsoft Office applications by using the . In the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
, it may entered using the compose key
Compose key
A compose key, available on some computer keyboards, is a special kind of modifier key designated to signal the software to interpret the following sequence of two keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found directly on the keyboard...
by pressing the compose key and three hyphens.
Corpus
Corpus linguistics
Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples or "real world" text. This method represents a digestive approach to deriving a set of abstract rules by which a natural language is governed or else relates to another language. Originally done by hand, corpora are now largely...
studies indicate that em dashes are more commonly used in Russian than in English.
En dash versus em dash
The en dash is wider than the hyphenHyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
but not as wide as the em dash. An em width is defined as the point size of the currently used font, since the M character is not always the width of the point size. In running text, various dash conventions are employed: an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — or a spaced en dash – like so – can be seen in contemporary publications.
Various style guides and national varieties of languages prescribe different guidance on dashes. Dashes have been cited as being treated differently in the US and the UK, with the former preferring the use of an em-dash with no additional spacing, and the latter preferring a spaced en-dash. As an example of the US style, The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
still recommends unspaced em dashes. Style guides outside of the US tend to diverge from this guidance. For example, the Canadian The Elements of Typographic Style
The Elements of Typographic Style
The Elements of Typographic Style is a book by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992 by Hartley & Marks Publishers, it was revised in 1996, 2001 , 2002 , 2004 , 2005 , and 2008...
recommends the spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash "belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography."
In the United Kingdom, the spaced en dash is the house style for certain major publishers, including the Penguin Group
Penguin Group
The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...
, the Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, and Routledge
Routledge
Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...
. But this convention is not universal. The Oxford Guide to Style
Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press...
(2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that the spaced en dash is used by "other British publishers", but states that the Oxford University Press—like "most US publishers"—uses the unspaced em dash.
The en dash—always with spaces in running text—and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the un-spaced em dash. Most typesetting and word processing expects word spacing to vary to support full justification
Justification (typesetting)
In typesetting, justification is the typographic alignment setting of text or images within a column or "measure" to align along both the left and right margin...
. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words it falls between. This can cause uneven spacing in the text, but can be mitigated by the use of thin spaces, hair spaces, or even zero-width space
Zero-width space
The zero-width space is a non-printing character used in computerized typesetting to indicate word boundaries to text processing systems when using scripts that do not use explicit spacing, or after characters that are not followed by a visible space but after which there may nevertheless be a...
s on the sides of the em dash. This provides the appearance of an unspaced em dash, but allows the words and dashes to break between lines. The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words further exaggerated. En dashes may also be preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns, such as in newspapers and similar publications, as the en dash is smaller. In such cases, its use is based purely on space considerations and is not necessarily related to other typographical concerns.
Horizontal bar
, also known as a quotation dash, is used to introduce quoted text. This is the standard method of printing dialogueDialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
in some languages. See the quotation dash section of the Quotation mark, non-English usage
Quotation mark, non-English usage
Quotation marks, also called quotes, speech marks or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase...
article for further details of how it is used. The em dash is equally suitable if the quotation dash is unavailable or is contrary to the house style being used.
There is no support in the standard TeX fonts, but one can use
\hbox{--- }\kern-.5em--- instead, or just use an em dash.The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
makes no mention of the horizontal bar or the quotation dash but states: "Em dashes are occasionally used instead of quotation marks to set off dialogue (à la writers in some European languages). Each speech starts a new paragraph. No space follows the dash."
Swung dash
resembles a lengthened tildeTilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
, and is used to separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
, it is frequently used to stand in for the term being defined. A dictionary entry providing an example for the term henceforth might employ the swung dash as follows:
- henceforth (adv.) from this time forth; from now on; "⁓ she will be known as Mrs. Wales"
There are several similar, related characters:, used in mathematics. In TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
and LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
, this character can be expressed using the math mode command
$\sim$., used in East Asian typography for a variety of purposes, including Japanese punctuation., used in East Asian typography.Similar characters
Several characters resemble dashes but have different meanings and uses. These include: is the standard ASCIIASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
hyphen. Sometimes this is used in groups to indicate different types of dash. is a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
mark. is either a diacritic mark, or a character replacing a standard space. is another diacritic mark. is used to indicate where a line may break, as in a compound word
Compound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
or between syllables. is the character that can be used to unambiguously represent a hyphen. is a short horizontal line used as a list bullet
Bullet (typography)
In typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list. For example:*Item 1*Item 2*Item 3...
., and several similar characters from the same Unicode block. is an arithmetic
Arithmetic
Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers...
operation
Operation (mathematics)
The general operation as explained on this page should not be confused with the more specific operators on vector spaces. For a notion in elementary mathematics, see arithmetic operation....
used in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
to represent subtraction
Subtraction
In arithmetic, subtraction is one of the four basic binary operations; it is the inverse of addition, meaning that if we start with any number and add any number and then subtract the same number we added, we return to the number we started with...
or negative numbers. and are wavy lines found in some East Asian character sets. Typographically, they have the width of one CJK
CJK
CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which is used in the field of software and communications internationalization.The term CJKV means CJK plus Vietnamese, which constitute the main East Asian languages.- Characteristics :...
character cell (fullwidth form), and follow the direction of the text, being horizontal for horizontal text, and vertical for columnar. They are used as dashes, and occasionally as emphatic variants of the katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
vowel extender mark. is a hyphen from the Mongolian Todo alphabet. or are Hangul
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
letters used in Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
to denote the sound [ɨ]., the Japanese chōonpu
Chōonpu
The , also known as ', ', or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese symbol which indicates a chōon, or a long vowel of two morae in length. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character...
, is used in Japanese to indicate a long vowel., the Chinese character for "one", is used in various East Asian languages.
Rendering dashes on computers
Typewriters and early computers have traditionally had only a limited characterCharacter (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
set, often having no key that produces a dash. In consequence, it became common to substitute the nearest available punctuation mark or symbol. Em dashes are often represented in British usage by a single hyphen-minus surrounded by spaces, or in American usage by two hyphen-minuses surrounded by spaces.
Modern computer software typically has support for many more characters, and is usually capable of rendering both the en and em dashes correctly—albeit sometimes with an inconvenient input method. Some software, though, may operate in a more limited mode. Some text editors, for example, are restricted to working with a single 8-bit character encoding
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
, and when unencodable characters are entered—for example by pasting from the clipboard—they are often blindly converted to question marks. Sometimes this happens to em and en dashes, even when the 8-bit encoding supports them, or when an alternative representation using hyphen-minuses is an option.
Any kind of dash can be used directly in an HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
document, but HTML also lets them be entered using character references. The em dash and the en dash are special in that they can be written using character entity reference
Character entity reference
In the markup languages SGML, HTML, XHTML and XML, a character entity reference is a reference to a particular kind of named entity that has been predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition . The "replacement text" of the entity consists of a single character from the Universal...
s as
— and –, respectively.- In LinuxLinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, under recent versions of GTK+GTK+GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
, there are various methods of producing these dashes. For em dashes, one may use the compose key followed by three presses of the hyphen character. For en dashes, one may press the compose key followed by two hyphens and a period. For all dashes, one may press and hold ctrl and shift and then press u (and release them all) after which an underlined 'u' appears. Then, type the Unicode number (i.e., 2015) for the appropriate dash and press enter or the space bar. Also, other keys may be remapped to create dashes. - In Mac OS XMac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
using the Australian, British, Canadian, German, Irish, Irish Extended, Italian, Pro Italian, Russian, US, US Extended, or Welsh keyboard layout, an en dash can be obtained by typing , while an em dash can be typed with . - In TeXTeXTeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
, an em dash is typed as three hyphens (---), an en dash as two hyphens (--), and a hyphen-minus as one hyphen (-). Mathematical minus is signified as$-$or\(-\). - On Plan 9Plan 9 from Bell LabsPlan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
systems, an en or em dash may be entered by pressing the Compose keyCompose keyA compose key, available on some computer keyboards, is a special kind of modifier key designated to signal the software to interpret the following sequence of two keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found directly on the keyboard...
(usually left Alt), followed by typing en or em respectively. - In Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
running on a computer whose keyboard has a numeric keypad, an en or em dash may be typed into most text areas by using their respective Alt code by holding down the Alt keyAlt keyThe Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing "A" will type the letter a, but if you hold down either Alt key while pressing A, the computer...
and pressing either 0150 or 0151. The numbers must be typed on the numeric keypad with Num LockNum lockNum Lock is a key on the numeric keypad of most computer keyboards. It is a toggle key, like Caps Lock and Scroll Lock. Its state is commonly represented by an LED light built into the keyboard....
enabled. In addition, the Character MapCharacter MapCharacter Map is a utility included with Microsoft Windows operating systems and is used to view the characters in any installed font, to check what keyboard input is used to enter those characters, and to copy characters to the clipboard in lieu of typing them. The tool is usually useful for...
utility included with Windows can be used to copy and paste en and em dash characters into most applications—along with accentedDiacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
letters and other non-English language characters. It can normally be found in the System Tools folder, or the Accessories folder on Windows VistaWindows VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
. Character Map can also be opened by typingcharmapin the run commandRun commandOn the Microsoft Windows operating system, the Run command is used to directly open an application or document whose path is known. It functions more or less like a single-line command line interface....
box. - In Microsoft WordMicrosoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
running on a computer whose keyboard has a numeric keypad, an em dash can be typed with ctrl + alt + numeric hyphen (on the numeric keypad, usually in the top-right corner), and an en dash can be typed with ctrl + numeric hyphen. This doesn't work with the hyphen key on the main keyboard (usually between "0" and "="), which has completely different functions. With Microsoft Word's default settings, in both Windows and Macintosh versions, an em dash symbol, which is not always a true em dash from the font, is automatically produced by Autocorrect when two unspaced hyphens are entered between words ("word--word"). An en dash, which again is not always a true en dash from the font, is automatically produced when one or two hyphens surrounded by spaces are entered: ("word - word") or ("word -- word"). This feature can be disabled by customizing Autocorrect. Other dashes, spaces, and special characters are possible, found through the Tools menu. Unassigned symbols, such as the true minus sign, can be assigned keyboard shortcuts through the Insert menu. To determine if the true en or em dash from the font are being used rather than a cross-referenced character from the Symbol font, copy and paste samples of the dashes into a text editor such as Windows Notepad. Using the true dash is important if one ever needs to share documents with other users in other applications or operating systems.
External links
- Peter K. Sheerin, The trouble with EM 'n EN
- Dashes and Hyphens
- Colons, Semicolons, and Em-dashes
- Commonly confused characters
- MediaWiki User's Guide to creating special characters