n-Dashing through the snow

Merry Christmas from Orso Publishing!

Now, we all know it’s Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen

not Hyphener, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen

But what exactly is the difference between dashes and hyphens? Our Christmas blog post seeks to explain exactly that!

Hyphens (-)

The hyphen is the shortest of the ‘big three’ dashes.

Use 1: Compound words and unit modifiers

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a far-fetched Christmas tale.
• The long-distance route Santa travels overnight is mind-blowing.

Use 2: Clarification / ease of reading

E.g. prefixes with repeated letters, or to prevent confusion when a word is split across lines.

• Santa re-enters the North Pole at the end of Christmas eve.
• My favourite Christmas carol is Away in a Man-
  ger.

En dashes or n-dashes (–)

Editorial tip: type them with alt-0150

So called because it’s roughly the width of a lower-case n, the en dash is a versatile one. It’s what most word processors create automatically if you add a space after a hyphen, and as a result it’s probably the most used of the ‘big three’ dashes.

Use 1: To show a link, comparison, or relationship between words

Note that, unlike hyphenated compound words, those that are joined by an en dash don’t necessarily take on a single meaning. They’re linked in context but not in definition.

• You can plot a reindeer’s journey on a velocity–time graph.
• Santa’s route ran along a north–south line.
• In snowy weather, there are delays on the Cheltenham–London train route.

Use 2: To show a progression or range

In these cases, the en dash can be considered as replacing the word ‘to’. Note that if you do use an en dash instead of the word ‘to’, you often also omit the word ‘from’ before it.

• The average person eats 2–3 times more per day over the holiday period.
• The check-in desk for the Chicago–Paris flight closed 10 minutes early, so Kevin was left home alone.

[Note the difference between the hyphen and the en dash in this sentence.]

Use 3: Replacing some other form of punctuation

(Usually a colon, a semicolon or brackets.)

• My work is taking forever – I’m ready for the holidays.

Note that the grammatical validity of Use 3 is debatable, and it should usually be avoided in formal publications.

Em dashes or m-dashes (—)

Editorial tip: type them with alt-0151

So called because—yep, you guessed it—they’re roughly the length of the letter m, m-dashes are probably the least-used of the ‘big three’ dashes.

Their only ‘correct’ use is as a replacement for brackets (or, similarly, commas), in situations where you want to give added emphasis to the text inside the brackets (whilst brackets usually serve the purpose of drawing emphasis away).

Note also that when you use em dashes in this way, there should be no space either side of the dash.

• As soon as I’m back to work—on January 2^nd—I’m going to take my tree down.
• After watching the Muppet Christmas Carol—which I absolutely loved—I can’t watch any other adaptations.

Note that, if the em-dashed text is at the end of a sentence, you only need to add a dash at the start of the clause. That may seem obvious, but it feels worth mentioning because it differs from brackets (which always come in pairs). In these cases, I like to think the em dash adds a little sass.

• My friends think Love Actually is the best Christmas film—clearly, they’ve not seen Die Hard.

We hope you found this blog post useful, and that you can now create top-notch, state-of-the-art content. If you’d like to hear more, why not get in touch and let us know what grammar questions—or queries—you’d like us to address in blog posts from Jan–Feb!