Until 1993-when the London Convention banned the practice-every nuclear nation simply dumped its radioactive waste into the world’s oceans.Īfter a brief negotiation, the union leaders-to everyone’s surprise-called off the general strike.Īlyson Twinklestar’s piano students-Esther, Emma, and Iris-were always playing pranks. You can also place such information between dashes, though the effect is different. This kind of information is called “non-essential” or non-restrictive” because it does not restrict or change the meaning of the rest of the sentence-it is just extra material. Around Parenthetical InformationĮxtra information is normally placed between commas or parentheses. Notice how in the second example-with its rather long list-the dash allows you to gather all your thoughts before concluding the sentence.
#Copy em dash registration
While phoning my fiancée, arranging for a tow-truck, and writing down the registration information from the truck driver, who did not want to cooperate-while doing all these things I had no time to cry over my crumpled car. Tsunamis, typhoons, and tornadoes-these are a few of my favourite things. You can use a dash not only before a list, but also after one: A dash simply creates a more casual effect. You’ll note that before an appositive or a list you would normally use a comma or colon. Richard Filigree spent four months tracking the Australian elephant-the most elusive animal he had ever studied.Ī flywheel is a wheel that stores and transfers rotational energy-something that is especially useful when you want to turn intermittent power into a continuous supply of energy.įatima’s project on the Edo culture of Japan included three demonstrations-a sumo wrestling contest, a recitation of haiku, and a dramatic demonstration of seppuku. She did not want to open the envelope-it could wait. He ordered an expensive-sounding bottle of champagne-a Banlieue de Paris. In the 1986 FIFA World Cup, the quarter-final was a contest between England and Argentina-two nations that had been at war over the Falkland Islands four years earlier. Before a Final ExplanationĪ dash is a great way to extend a sentence and add a final explanation, a list, or an appositive phrase: Dashes make you appear nonchalant, confident, even witty. Since the em dash is the most common dash, we will just refer to it as “the dash.” The purpose of the dash is to indicate a sudden shift in a sentence or to set off and draw attention to specific words.Įither way, the dash adds some style to your writing. Whatever usage you follow, the main thing is to be consistent. It is not unusual, though, to see instead a dash with spaces around it ( word – word).
#Copy em dash manuals
Many style manuals suggest you leave no spaces around a dash ( word-word). Again, as you keep typing, Word will lengthen the hyphen slightly to create an en dash. The en dash is formed with one hyphen and no spaces around it.
The em dash is formed with two hyphens (–) and no extra spaces, which MS Word reformats automatically to a longer dash when you keep typing. Their names come from the width of the letters M and N: That means a sentence like this-though an odd example-appears a bit more artistic.There are two types of dashes: the em dash and the en dash. It is mostly used stylistically to replace commas, colons, and parentheses. The em dash is the one we most associate as a long dash. If the type-size you’re using is 12px, then your em dash will be 12px in length.
Right… So, what is an em? In printing or character display on a screen, “em” is a unit of measurement roughly equal to the height of the font being used.
Simply put, an em dash is a dash the width of an em. There are three standard types of horizontal punctuation “lines” used in writing:
But what about those dashes that appear more extended than a hyphen? What are they used for, and how do you type them? This quick little guide should help you out. It is primarily used to hyphenate words (hence its name) and often used as the minus sign (-) in math. We are all familiar with the standard hyphen symbol and know what it’s called.
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