Grammar Greatness: Hyphen versus Dash smackdown.

The Hyphen – is a short horizontal line, and often confused with its longer cousin, the Dash.

Hyphens have three main uses …

1. The Hyphen can be used to join words that need to be glued together (called “compound words” by grammar pros).

Examples

• Brazil is a Portuguese–speaking nation.
• The MiG–25 Foxbat is the world’s fastest–moving fighter jet.
• My father–in–law did not approve of me, at first.

2). The Hyphen can be used to stick a prefix to the start of a word.

Examples

• It was a post–natal ward.
• Trump will be the ex–president one day.
• They created a new sub–category just for me.

3). The Hyphen can be used to glue numbers together in a sentence.

Examples

• My father just celebrated his eighty–ninth birthday.
• I earned thirty–three thousand Dollars last year.

Then, there’s the Dash

The Dash is longer than the Hyphen and comes in two flavours, the En Dash (long) and Em Dash (extra-long).

The En Dash – is so-called because it used to be as long as the letter “N” during the days of physical typesetting in printers, while the Em Dash — was as long as the even wider “M”.

En Dashes are often used to write ranges, or to separate two statements instead of a comma.

En Dash Examples

• I won every Football prize on the team from 1999–2005.
• I hit the orc with my sword Blood-biter – hard!

Em Dashes are used for change of pace and dramatic effect, as well as as to herd off less important text.

Em Dash Examples

• I slammed my car into the Porsche chasing me — hey, nice pink furry dice!
• My friend Bob — a useless friend, but a pal all the same — was sadly my only friend who survived the zombie plague outbreak.

These two bad boys rarely feature in grammar/punctuation exams, but using hyphens instead of dashes in indie-published books leaves you looking like an amateur.

Category: Wizard of Words