2/25/2024 0 Comments M and n dash![]() The em is a typography unit equal to the current point size of the type. In today’s digital fonts, they run narrower.I was thrilled beyond measure when I discovered the meaning behind the terms “em” and “en” while researching this article. Originally, the width of the em and en dashes corresponded to these units. To disambiguate, loud print shops referred to them as mutton and nut.) In a traditional metal font, the em was the vertical distance from the top of a piece of type to the bottom. But if your em dashes look like they’re being squeezed, it’s fine to add word spaces before and after.Įm and en refer to units of typographic measurement, not to the letters M and N. Sarbanes–Oxley (with an en dash).Įm and en dashes are typically set flush against the surrounding text. ![]() Sarbanes-Oxley (with a hyphen), not Mr. If the son and daughter of Sarbanes and Oxley married, they’d be known as Mr. The em dash puts a nice pause in the text-and it is underused in professional writing.ĭon’t use a slash ( / ) where an en dash is correct.Įven though the en dash is used for joint authors (Sarbanes–Oxley Act), use a hyphen for compound names. Use it when a comma is too weak, but a colon, semicolon, or pair of parentheses is too strong. The em dash is used to make a break between parts of a sentence. It denotes a connection or contrast between pairs of words (conservative–liberal split, Arizona–Nevada reciprocity, Sarbanes–Oxley Act). If you open with from, pair it with to instead of an en dash (from 1880 to 1912, not from 1880–1912). The en dash ( –) is about half as wide.Įn and em dashes are often approximated by typing two or three hyphens in a row ( - or - ). The em dash ( -) is typically about as wide as a capital H. If you mean the latter, then you’d write five-dollar bills.ĭashes come in two sizes-the en dash and the em dash. Is five the quantity of dollar bills, or are the bills each worth five dollars? As written, it suggests the former. As a professional writer, you should not.įor instance, consider the unhyphenated phrase five dollar bills. Nonprofessional writers often omit these hyphens. Nor is a hyphen necessary in multipart foreign terms or proper names used as adjectives ( habeas corpus appeal on the Third Circuit docket, not habeas-corpus appeal on the Third-Circuit docket).Ī hyphen is used in phrasal adjectives (commercial-speech restriction, estate-planning attorney, law-school grades) to ensure clarity. No hyphen is necessary in phrasal adjectives that begin with an adverb ending in ‑ly (it’s a closely held company, not a closely-held company). But a prefix is not typically followed with a hyphen ( nonprofit, not non-profit). Some multipart words are spelled with a hyphen (topsy-turvy, cost-effective, bric-a-brac). These hyphens are added and removed automatically by your word processor’s hyphenation feature. It has three uses.Ī hyphen appears at the end of a line when a word breaks onto the next line. The hyphen ( -) is the smallest of these marks. ![]() Hyphens and dashes look similar, but they’re not interchangeable. Hyphens and dashes Use them, don’t confuse them
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