How To Use Long Dashes
The long dash is the widest of the three horizontal marks that may be used in the middle of a sentence.
How to use long dashes. The hyphen the shortest of the three marks is familiar sometimes wretchedly so to most writers. Em dash other names. Please accept my application for the position advertised in the news and observer. Using a colon between a verb and its object or complement. What is an em dash and when should you use it.
Em dash symbol em dash alt code. Here are some examples. Long dashes help add clarity signal a break or indicate an interruption in a sentence. A colon can be used immediately after the greeting in a formal letter less formal letters tend to use a comma in this location. Conversely use a shorter en dash to indicate a range of numbers like 10 15.
An em dash can replace commas parentheses and colons. Thousands of children like the girl in this photograph have been left homeless. After we buy toenail clippers the dinosaur in that exhibit could use a trim you know we ll stop at the doughnut shop. So is the em dash more often called the long dash or sometimes just the dash. 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.
Typically you shouldn t include a space before or after the em dash. In pairs to mark off information or ideas that are not essential to an understanding of the rest of the sentence. To whom it may concern. Long dashes in writing. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does.
It is wider than an en dash or a hyphen. When a comma or colon isn t enough or you want to avoid using parentheses the em dash may be the punctuation mark for you. Em dash shortcut windows ctrl alt minus on numeric keypad em dash shortcut mac command m. The term em dash comes from the field of typography an em is a width equivalent to the height of a given font. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom.