My college years, 2006–2011, were the happiest in my life so far. For the sake of parallel construction, the word to, never the en dash, should be used if from precedes the first element. In this use it signifies up to and including (or through).
The principal use of the en dash is to connect numbers and, less often, words. It is called an en dash because its length is approximately that of the letter N (capitalized). The en dash is created by keying keying in CTRL and the minus sign on the number board however, if you do not have the complete keyboard, you can key in ALT and 0150. That’s K-I-R-B-Y and K-E-I-T-H.”Ī proficient signer can fingerspell X-Y-L-O-P-H-O-N-E in less than two seconds. It is also used-in dialogue, in reference to American Sign Language, and elsewhere-to separate letters when a word is spelled out. Two-thirds three-quarters of the class one and one-halfįor a comprehensive and categorized listing of compound words and whether or not they should be hyphenated, click here.Ī hyphen is used to separate numbers that are not inclusive, such as telephone numbers, social security numbers, and ISBNs. Six-year-old child a sixty-three-year-old but he is six years old The hyphen is commonly used in compounds words and names in word divisions. So how are they different and what functions do they serve in technical writing? The use of en and em dashes are thoroughly distinguished from the use of hyphen by the Chicago Manual of Style in chapters 6.80 to 6.96.Īs for their appearance, this is how they look like:Įn dash – (CTRL + minus sign on the number board or ALT + 0150 if you don’t have the full keyboard)Įm dash - (CTRL + ALT + minus sign on the number board or ALT + 0151 if you don’t have the full keyboard)ģ em dashes - (em dashes encoded thrice) So what ever did they use in lieu of en dashes? Hyphens, of course.
Pre-PC times, writers made do with two successive hyphens (–) for em dashes on their typewriters. However, as it turned out, hyphens and dashes (em and en) actually have their uses and specific appearance. Not until I started my job as a copyeditor in a publishing company about a year ago, I thought hyphen and dashes were essentially the same or maybe somehow different but interchangeable, that they are just two different words used to refer to the same thing. After all, if a hyphen would suffice, why use dashes? Unless you’ve done some proofreading or have had some experience with publishing, you probably wouldn’t have heard of em and en dashes (its not-so-popular sibling). And hyphens and dashes are one and the same (cliché there).
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