How To Use Dashes In Writing

With that background information in mind let s take a look at some ways to put dashes to work in your writing.

How to use dashes in writing. In windows hold down the alt key then press the numbers 0150. Could use commas in the 15th century when of course nobody had electricity water was often pumped by hand. An em dash is used to indicate a break in a sentence or question. To set off material for emphasis. Similarly limit the frequency of dash use in your writing.

On a mac hold down the option key then press the minus key. Dashes are usually considered to be informal. It is used in the same manner as a parenthetical expression. Take it out and the sentence makes sense. My brothers richard and john are visiting hanoi.

Em dashes so called because they are at least historically the width of the character m are used for emphasis or interruption. Rather than placing parentheses around a phrase within a statement writers can opt to surround the phrase with an em dash on either end. The dash works somewhat like parentheses or commas but it is used where a stronger punctuation is needed. The big daddy of dashes the em dash is generally twice as long again as the en dash. The information inside the dashes is off topic.

The sure fire way of creating an em dash is to use alt and 0151 on the numeric keypad. Most commonly a dash connects an independent clause with another with a related thought plus a conjunction like or but yet as for and after the second dash. Think of dashes as the opposite of parentheses. You might want to replace the use of a dash with a set of parentheses or even commas. The name em indicates that the dash is roughly the size of the letter m.

Us publishers and the oxford university press in the uk choose to use closed up em dashes em dashes without any spaces where other uk publishers might use spaced en dashes. The two most common dashes are the em dash and the en dash. Using the en dash to denote a connection the en dash may also be used to indicate a connection between two words. Use an en dash when you need to connect terms that are already hyphenated or when you are using a two word phrase as a modifier. When the dash is used in this way it creates a compound adjective.