How Do You Know When To Use Dashes

Use a dash to prepare for a list a restatement an amplification or a dramatic shift in tone or thought.

How do you know when to use dashes. In general you can think of parentheses commas and dashes as a continuum of marks. Note how dashes subtly change the tone of the following sentences. Dashes are often used to signal an abrupt change in a sentence indicating that the reader should pay close attention to what comes next. You use them to surround something that seems a bit out of place in the sentence an aside a clarification or a commentary. You have to use an em dash when crediting.

Using dashes to credit quotations you can use an em dash to credit a quote to someone. Overusing dashes can break up the flow of your writing making it choppy or even difficult to follow so don t overdo it. The reason for using an en dash with such compounds is to send a subtle signal to the reader that the prefix belongs to the entire compound not just the first word of it. Let s start with those quiet parentheses. Dashes like commas semicolons colons ellipses and parentheses indicate added emphasis an interruption or an abrupt change of thought.

It s also important to distinguish between dashes and hyphens. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Place em dashes around non essential information or a list in the middle of a sentence like you would with commas. Parentheses are the quiet whisper of an aside commas are the conversational voice of a friend walking by your desk and dashes are the yowl of a pirate dashing into a fray. What is an em dash and when should you use it.

The most common types of dashes are the en dash and the em dash. The first thing to know when talking about dashes is that they are almost never required by the laws of grammar and punctuation. 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. A good way to remember the difference between these two dashes is to visualize the en dash as the length of the letter n and the em dash as the length of the letter m. Here are some different situations when you can use an em dash.

Experienced writers know that these marks are not interchangeable. To start with just the first item on that list we can. Em en and the double hyphen. There are three forms of dashes. Most often they re used in pairs to emphasize an element or elements within a sentence.