Dash (punctuation)
A dash is a punctuation mark, and is not to be confused with the hyphen, which has quite different uses.
Common dashes
Several forms of dashes exist, of which the most common are:
- The figure dash (‒)
- The en dash (–)
- The em dash (—)
- The quotation dash (―).
The figure dash or minus sign (‒) is so named because it is the same width as a digit. The minus sign is slightly longer than the hyphen, usually the same length as the en dash. Obviously one uses the hyphen in mathematical formulas and equations. The minus sign is usually designed to be the same length as the plus and equals signs. In most fonts these are usually monospaced along with the numbers for ease when being used in tabular formats. Use the numeric form ‒ or ‒ to type it.
The en dash (–) is used to indicate a closed range, or a connection between two things of almost any kind: numbers, people, places, etc..
Examples: June–July 1967
1:00–2:00 p.m.
For ages 3–5
pp. 38–55.
You would also use an en dash when you have a compound adjective, one part of which consists of two words or a hyphenated word:
New York–London flight
pre–World War II period
high-priority–high-pressure tasks
An en dash correctly does not have spaces around it; however, when an actual en dash is unavailable, use a dash with single spaces (" - ") to distinguish from a hyphen; or (better) use the character – or the numeric form, – or –, in either case without spaces around it. (Correct use calls for a hair space, which is often badly rendered in browsers.)
The em dash (—),so named because it is one in width, indicates a sudden break in thought; a parenthetical statement (like the one at the start of this sentence); or an open range ("John Doe, 1987—"). As a rule, the em dash is twice as long as the en dash. This dash is the length if the capital M in any particular font. The em dash is used in much the way a colon or set of parentheses is used: it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a period is too strong and a comma too weak. An em dash is never surrounded by spaces.
When an actual em dash is unavailable, use a doubledash ("--") to distinguish from a hyphen; or (better) use the character — or the numeric form, — or —, in either case without spaces around it.
The quotation dash or horizontal bar (―) is used to introduce quoted text. In most fonts it is rendered identically to the em dash, which can also be used. Since browser support for it is nearly non-exist, in Wikipedia use the em dash instead. It can be typed only with the numeric form, ―.
Other dashes and dash-like characters
- The hyphen-minus (-)
- The tilde (~)
- The underscore (_)
- The Macron (¯)
- The soft hyphen ()
- The Armenian hyphen (֊)
- The Mongolian todo hyphen (᠆)
- The hyphen (‐)
- The minus sign (−)
The hyphen-minus (-) is the standard ASCII hyphen. It looks like a dash, but should never be used as such outside of ASCII.
The tilde (~) is a diacritic mark.
The underscore (_) is either a diacritic mark, or a character replacing a standard space.
The Macron (¯) is another diacritic mark.
The soft hyphen () is a hyphen which should only appear at a page break.
The Armenian hyphen (֊) is a soft hyphen from the Armenian alphabet.
The Mongolian todo hyphen (᠆) is a soft hyphen from the Mongolian alphabet.
The hyphen (‐) is a character which unlike the ASCII hyphen always represents a hyphen.
The minus sign (−) is an arithmetic operator which may look the same as the glyph for a hyphen-minus, or may be longer.
Rendering dashes on computers
Typewriters and computers have traditionally had only a limited character set, often having no key with which to produce a dash. In consequence, it became common to substitute the nearest incorrect punctuation mark or symbol. Em dashes are often represented by a pair of spaces surrounding a single minus sign (typical British usage) or by a pair of spaces surrounding two minus signs (mostly in the United States).
Modern computer software, however, typically has a much expanded character set and is usually perfectly capable of rendering both the en and em dashes correctly—albeit with a little inconvenience.
The HTML entity names for the em dash and the en dash are — and –. The equivalent HTML numeric character entity references are — and –. Nearly all web browsers and operating systems used today are capable of rendering the numeric form, and almost as many correctly display the named form.
In Unicode, the figure dash, en dash, em dash, and quotation dash correspond to characters U+2012, U+2013, U+2014, and U+2015, respectively.
Under Mac OS X, an em dash can be obtained in any application by typing shift-option-dash. An en dash can be obtained with option-dash.
In TeX, an em dash is typed as three hyphens ("---"), an en dash as two hyphens ("--"), and a hyphen as one hyphen ("-").
In professionally printed documents, the typographer sometimes adds a hair space on either side of an em dash (a refinement that is not practicable in electronic form given the limitations of current-generation web browsers) or even a full space, though this last is uncommon.
See also: .
External links
Referenced By
Typewriter
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