![]() My cat has a pretty revolting habit that I wish she’d break- bringing me dead animals. It can take the place of a semicolon, colon, or comma if you’re trying to introduce a new clause with slightly more emphasis or drama. When to use an em dash instead of some other punctuation mark is largely up to you. It’s longer than an en dash-just like the elements you’re separating. If the answer is the former, go with an em dash. In general, a good way to remember whether you need an em dash or an en dash is to ask yourself some version of this question: Are you trying to separate whole parts of a sentence, or link individual terms together? That said, unless they’re all lined up next to each other, it’s not always easy to identify which one you’re looking at, so it helps to have a handle on which contexts call for which little line. As its name suggests, an em dash (-) is roughly the length of the letter M, while an en dash (–) more closely matches an N. You can blame that difficulty at least partially on how similar they look. But even that can’t compare to the puzzle of picking the right kind of dash or hyphen to drop into a sentence. The semicolon-vs.-colon decision is a bit tougher to make. The most recent update, with contributions from Jessica Lau, was in January 2023.When it comes to proper punctuation, choosing between an exclamation point and a question mark is child’s play. This article was originally published in October 2020. Now go forth and fill your work with far too many of them. For now, though, I hope these tips helped you type em (and en) dashes. I sincerely hope that, someday in the near future, Microsoft will make a change to its operating system that makes this article completely useless. For example: The office is open Monday–Friday.Ĭonsidering there are significant differences between an em and en dash, it really shouldn't be this hard to type them using only a keyboard. For example: A notebook, pen, and laptop-these were all in my welcome kit! The em dash (-) is used to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence. My editor made me add this, so really quickly, here's the difference between an em and en dash: If most of your writing happens in Google Docs, good news: Google Docs has an autoreplace feature, which you could use instead of a system-wide tool. Install the app, then make a phrase that creates your desired dash. PhraseExpress, which is free for personal use, works quite well for this. You can also set up a rule to quickly make dashes. It's a great time saver, particularly if there are things you wind up sharing with coworkers, customers, or potential dates multiple times a day. These apps automatically replace custom keywords with whatever you want. But text expansion apps are a better tool for the job. You could leave your notepad open with an em dash to copy and paste as needed-that's what my editor used to do when she had a PC. Windows doesn't offer a quick way to make these dashes, so you'll have to add your own. Create the long dash symbol using autoreplace software For now, though, let's check out some potential alternatives. Why doesn't Microsoft make this a system-wide setting in Windows? I don't know, and you should ask them, on Twitter, daily. Again, Microsoft Office apps should figure out what you want and insert the correct dash. And if you want an en dash, surround a single dash with spaces between two words, like - this. Put two dashes between two words, like-this, and the app will understand you mean to insert an em dash. If you're working in Microsoft Office apps like Word or Outlook, there's another option. While this only gives me a slight headache, I'm somehow even more annoyed than before.
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