How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

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650 points Stratoscope | 1 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.276s | source

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mmooss ◴[27 Mar 25 23:41 UTC] No.43499567[source]▶

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember:

* Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker, cut-and-dried, 212-555-5555.

* EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.)

* EM dashes break things, such as sentences or thoughts: 'What the—!'; A paragraph should express one idea—but rules are made to be broken.

Unicode has the original ASCII hyphen-minus (U+002d), as well as a dedicated hyphen (U+2010), other functional hyphens such as soft and non-breaking hyphens, and a dedicated minus sign (U+2212), and some variations of minus such as subscript, superscript, etc.

There's also the figure dash "‒" (U+2012), essentally a hyphen-minus that's the same width as numbers and used aesthetically for typsetting, afaik. And don't overlook two-em-dashes "⸺" and three-em-dashes "⸻" and horizontal bars "―", the latter used like quotation marks!

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BoumTAC ◴[28 Mar 25 09:15 UTC] No.43503176[source]▶

>>43499567 #

I'm not a native English speaker, but don't you use the ";" in English ?

To me, it feels like it is the same purpose as the EM dashes.

And I discovered the EM with ChatGPT, I've never seen it before.

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1. mmooss ◴[28 Mar 25 18:58 UTC] No.43508852[source]▶

>>43503176 #

Many people don't use semicolons (;) in English but many do, and they are certainly part of correct grammar.

Semicolons are generally alternatives to periods, when you want more connection between the two sentences. Like periods, semicolons must have two full sentences—that is, what could be full sentences—on either side of them; the potential 'full sentences' are properly called independent clauses. (A dependent clause needs the rest of the sentence to form valid grammar; it can't function on its own. For example, in this paragraph's first sentence, when you want more connection between the two sentences is a dependent clause. Often they follow commas.)

Another use of semicolons is for lists in a paragraph where one of the list items has a comma in it (similar to the parsing problem for CSVs where some records contain commas): I only like wine; beer, but only ales; and orange juice.

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