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.
Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the start of each item in a bulleted list, but a plain hyphen is more commonly used. When an en dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding environment—as in the ASCII character set—there are some conventional substitutions. An em dash can replace a semicolon that connects two independent https://www.tokenexus.com/ sentences. For example, the prefix post- is usually connected to the following word with a hyphen, but to connect it to the compound noun World War II, it’s better to use an en dash. More rarely, an en dash is used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective. Specifically, an en dash is preferred when one element of the compound is itself an open compound.
What is an em dash?
In all of these uses, the en dash is used without spaces. There are a number of situations where it is appropriate to use a hyphen. Learning hyphen rules helps you use this punctuation mark correctly. Discover what each one is, find out when to use each option, and learn how to properly type the dash most suitable for what you are writing.
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 spaces on the sides of the em dash.
How to Type a Dash
The following sentences show different ways that we can use an em dash. As you read each sentence, try to see if you can figure out what other punctuation mark was replaced by an em dash. Note that in the phrases “from … to …” and “between … and …,” it’s standard to retain the word “to” or “and” instead of using an en dash, to maintain parallel construction in the sentence.
Now that you’re familiar with hyphens, em dashes and en dashes, consider brushing up on other commonly used punctuation marks in English grammar. You can also explore how to use other misunderstood punctuations such as the colon and semicolon. To dig a little deeper, learn the basic punctuation rules that every writer must follow. The en dash – always with spaces in running text when, as discussed in this section, indicating a parenthesis or pause – and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash.
Fire in the Hole in Geometry Dash, explained
It may be used just like a colon, to introduce a list or idea. The m dash is less formal than the colon and is generally not used in formal writing. Not all fonts and keyboards allow you to produce a long em dash. If it’s not possible to make the long dash, two hyphens may be used instead.
However, what will happen is a sort of environmental boss fight. There are no coins to collect here, and your sole focus is avoiding the spikes that will be striking quicker and in stranger patterns. Immediately grab the two coins on the platform now in the middle and the one next to the fire hazard before the spike-wave comes back around. While the spikes are launching toward you, run to the right and jump to grab the final coin before then jumping over the spike-wave. Immediately, three platforms will appear at different heights.
DASH diet: Suggested servings
The term “em dash” comes from the field of typography—an “em” is a width equivalent to the height of a given font. Thus, an em dash in 9-point type is as long as the height of a basic letter in 9-point type. The What is Dash em dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2014 (decimal 8212) and represented in HTML by the named character entity —. The em dash is sometimes used as a leading character to identify the source of a quoted text.
- They can be used to link two words together, so the word or phrase makes sense and doesn’t confuse the reader.
- Most word processors will
not do this automatically, however, and it will require some fiddling.
- The em dash is equally suitable if the quotation dash is unavailable or is contrary to the house style being used.
- Write four of your own sentences using a single dash to show an after-thought.
- An em dash, like a comma, a semicolon, a colon, parentheses, and an ellipsis, signifies additional emphasis, a break in the flow of thought, or a sudden shift in direction.
- Then grab the coin by the other fire hazard on the other side, you’ll have to jump to get it.
- Pilot and aviation consultant Tim Atkinson told Sky News the planes weigh 20-something tonnes and are “not anything like the size of the A350s” but are “sizeable enough to have a significant volume of fuel on board”.
Some
Victorians, not wanting to set their fictional narratives in any identifiable
location, also wrote things like At the time, I was living at B— in the
county of
S—. Note, however, that dashes used in this way are considered more informal than other punctuation marks, so should be used sparingly and selectively in academic writing. A dash (—) is a punctuation mark used to set off an idea within a sentence and may be used alone or in pairs. Dashes interrupt a thought in a more dramatic way than a phrase enclosed in commas, but less theatrically than parentheses.
