How Do You Know When To Use Dashes

Do not overuse dashes or use them in place of other punctuation.

How do you know when to use dashes. You have to use an em dash when crediting. There used to be a real me but i had it surgically removed peter sellers 1925 1980 note. There are three forms of dashes. Em en and the double hyphen. Dashes like commas semicolons colons ellipses and parentheses indicate added emphasis an interruption or an abrupt change of thought.

The first thing to know when talking about dashes is that they are almost never required by the laws of grammar and punctuation. You use them to surround something that seems a bit out of place in the sentence an aside a clarification or a commentary. Use a dash to prepare for a list a restatement an amplification or a dramatic shift in tone or thought. The vegetarian gasped in horror when he saw lining the wall of the cabin a collection of animal heads moose deer bears squirrels all dead. A good way to remember the difference between these two dashes is to visualize the en dash as the length of the letter n and the em dash as the length of the letter m.

Here are some different situations when you can use an em dash. Experienced writers know that these marks are not interchangeable. A dash can be used to add emphasis at the beginning middle or end of a. Place em dashes around non essential information or a list in the middle of a sentence like you would with commas. Overusing dashes can break up the flow of your writing making it choppy or even difficult to follow so don t overdo it.

Note how dashes subtly change the tone of the following sentences. Use a longer em dash to join independent clauses with words like and but as or and for. The most common types of dashes are the en dash and the em dash. To properly use a dash in an english sentence start by identifying which dash you should use. The reason for using an en dash with such compounds is to send a subtle signal to the reader that the prefix belongs to the entire compound not just the first word of it.

It s also important to distinguish between dashes and hyphens. Most often they re used in pairs to emphasize an element or elements within a sentence. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Dashes are punctuation marks used to set off non essential information to loosely connect two thoughts or to mark a break in the sentence. An em dash also called a long dash or thick dash is approximately the width of the letter m which is where it earns its name.