How To Use Dashes Properly

Dashes can also be used as parenthesis.

How to use dashes properly. A single dash can emphasize material at the beginning or end of a. Use an en dash when you need to connect terms that are already hyphenated or when you are using a two word phrase as a modifier. To judge whether a dash is appropriate try to remove the words between the dashes. The en dash may also be used to indicate a connection between two words. Dashes can be used for emphasis in several ways.

Using the en dash to denote a connection. Alternatively you can use alt with numeric keys 0150. Using dashes correctly isn t just an old school technique. The em dash can be used to replace parentheses colons and commas. In order to use this dash sign you have to press control and key in the numeric keypad.

Where parentheses indicate that the reader should put less emphasis on the enclosed material dashes indicate that the reader should pay more attention to the material between the dashes. Here are two examples of proper dash usage. Most often these are ranges of numbers or dates and are used. When a range with en dash falls at the end of a sentence word will split the number after the en dash to next line. Dashes add drama parentheses whisper.

Firstly looking at the hyphen the default dash. Although many people call the hyphen a dash dash refers to another group of horizontal lines in text. When the dash is used in this way it creates a compound adjective. If the sentence appears disjointed or does not make sense you may need to revise it instead of using the dashes. This grammar lesson offers an explanation on the correct use of dashes and gives examples of dashes used in sentences.

A hyphen is used for linking words and parts of words together. See the following examples. Em dashes so called because they are at least historically the width of the character m are used for emphasis or interruption. The two most common dashes are the em dash and the en dash. Generally using the em dash makes the writing style more informal as if you were writing to an old friend.