The Syntaxis Blog
Hyphens and Dashes: The Vocabulary of Small Horizontal Lines
Q. What is the difference between a hyphen and a dash?
A. People often use the words hyphen and dash interchangeably, but they are two different things. In fact, they are actually three different things, because there are two types of dashes.
| Name | Example |
|---|---|
| Em Dash |  |
| En Dash |  |
| Hyphen |  |
One is the longer em dash, which is what people almost always mean when they refer to dashes and which is, for most people, the only dash they need concern themselves with. The other is the more diminutive en dash, which has limited and specialized applications, and which most businesspeople do not need to use in their daily lives.
The guide below summarizes the main differences among the three horizontal lines.
The Essential Guide to Horizontal Lines
1 Em Dash or, Simply, Dash
How to Make One
Method 1. Double Hyphen
Immediately after a word, type two consecutive hyphens, then type the next word. As soon as you press the space bar after that second word, Microsoft Word will convert the two hyphens to an em dash. If you like to have a space before and after your em dashes, that’s fine, too, but you will need to use Method 2 below to create your em dash. (The reason: if you type word/space/hyphen/hyphen/space, Word will convert the double hyphen to an en dash.)
Method 2. Insert Symbol
- 1. Select Insert menu.
- 2. Click Symbol.
- 3. Select Special Characters
- 4. Select Em Dash.
- 5. Click Insert.
- 6. Click Close.
In Microsoft Word:
What It’s For
1. Asides
Maria told her boss she wouldn’t be late—we had all heard such reassurances before—but she arrived at 3:20 p.m. for our 2:45 p.m. meeting.
2. Drama
The company had been planning to add a dozen new products, open four new offices, and double its U.S. workforce—and then the subprime crisis struck.
3. Clarity: When a Comma Just Won’t Do
Unclear.
I had extra tickets to the opera, so I called my mother, a talented soprano, and my sister to see if they wanted to go.
The problem: is the mother a talented soprano, or is the talented person the second person in a list of three people? The dashes in the revised sentence below eliminate that ambiguity, showing that the mother is the talented soprano.
Clear.
I had extra tickets to the opera, so I called my mother—a talented soprano—and my sister to see if they wanted to go.
2 En Dash
How to Make One
- 1. Select Insert menu.
- 2. Click Symbol.
- 3. Select Special Characters
- 4. Select En Dash.
- 5. Click Insert.
- 6. Click Close.
In Microsoft Word:
What It’s For
Unless you’re in publishing, editorial services, or graphic design, you can probably banish the en dash from your daily life. It is sometimes used for ranges, as in 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m., and in a couple of other situations, but for most people in a business context, the hyphen will work perfectly well in lieu of the en dash. If your job requires that you be en-dash-literate, consult a guide such as The Chicago Manual of Style for more information on its applications.
3 Hyphen
How to Make One
Press the hyphen key on your keyboard, above and to the right of the letter P.
What It’s For
A hyphen is the short little line that appears when a word breaks between syllables at the end of a line of text. The hyphen is also used to combine two words into a single unit, as in:
Jack is a smooth-talking man with a high-end computer.
For those of you who have trouble remembering your horizontal-line vocabulary, here’s a mnemonic device (memory aid):
A dash
Is for panache;
A hyphen’s
More triflin’.