I’m beginning to think that the em dash is the least understood of the punctuation marks, and that the fault isn’t with writers. It’s with computers.
If you’re joining words or separating syllables, you want a hyphen.
If you’re describing a range of values, times, or scores, you want an en dash. An en dash is the dash that’s as wide as the letter n.
If you’re using a dash in your writing for any of the other purposes you’re likely to use a dash for—such as setting off parenthetical statements like this one, or indicating an interruption in dialog—it’s almost certain that the em dash will be the one you need. (So named because it’s as wide as the letter m. Clever, no?) As Mental Floss Magazine says, “The em dash is the spork of English grammar: It ain’t particularly pretty, but you can use it for most anything.”
Go on, now. Find the em dash on your keyboard. Go ahead. Find it.
You can’t, can you? You’ve got a minus/hyphen thing, and you’ve got an underscore, and…that’s it.
If you ask Microsoft Word nicely, it’ll consider turning two hyphens in a row into an em dash for you automatically. It’s equally probable that it won’t, and that your happy editor will have the enviable task of converting all those hyphens to dashes for you.
How do you find the elusive em dash, then?
In HTML, it hides in plain sight. Just as & will give you an &, – will give you an en dash, and — will give you an em dash.
In your word processor, it hides among the symbols. You probably have an “Insert” menu, with a “Symbol” choice as a submenu, which brings up a whole box of arcane-looking glyphs from which to choose:
The longest dash in the bunch is probably your pick, but check carefully, because it might be a misleadingly-centered underscore.
Once you’ve selected the em dash in the symbol menu, you may notice that it’s been assigned a long-winded series of keystrokes that will let you type it directly into your manuscript. In Microsoft Word, as you can see above, my screen tells me that I can hold down “alt” while I type “0151″ and get an em dash on my screen free of charge. That’s a lot of work to do for a single character, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to bother to do it. But there is also, on that same screen, a clickable option called “shortcut key”. If your editor is smart, she’s gone into this menu and assigned the em dash a convenient shortcut. This editor has chosen “ctrl -”, because it’s easy for me to remember where I’ve put it when it’s on the key with the rest of the dash-type-objects, but you should choose something convenient that you’ll remember.
According to Chicago Manual of Style, em dashes should not be surrounded by spaces. If you’re going by another stylesheet, your mileage may vary. Check your style, check with your editor or publisher. Whether you space or don’t space, though, you’ll save your editor a lot of time if you use the right dashes in your writing.
Here is another way to easily created em dashes and en dashes, without using the Character Map or Insert > Symbol, at least for PC users of versions of Word before 2007*:
1. For an em dash: Hold down both the Ctrl and Alt buttons while clicking the minus key within the number pad on the keyboard.
2. For an en dash: Hold down only the Ctrl button while clicking the
minus key within the number pad on the keyboard
Note that these shortcuts work from within Word; they generally don’t
work within e-mail programs.
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*I use Word 2003 on a PC running Windows XP.
Ahem. That should be: … way to easily create …
I’ve always wondered about the em dash. Now I know. :)