What is the meaning of hyphen and dash?

What is the meaning of hyphen and dash?

A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. A dash is longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause.

When can you use a dash in writing?

A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text (not at the bottom: that’s an underscore). It’s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Dashes are used to separate groups of words, not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does.

How do you use a dash in writing examples?

Use dashes to mark the beginning and end of a series, which might otherwise get confused, with the rest of the sentence: Example: The three female characters—the wife, the nun, and the jockey—are the incarnation of excellence. Dashes are also used to mark the interruption of a sentence in dialogue: Example: “Help!

How do you use a dash in academic writing?

How to use hyphens in academic writing

1. Hyphens are punctuation marks used to link multiple words.
2. Use a hyphen to join words together to avoid ambiguity.
3. Use a hyphen when two or more words act as a single adjective before a noun.
4. Hyphenate spelled-out numbers between 21 and 99 (twenty-one, ninety-nine).

What’s the difference between a hyphen and a dash?

What’s the Difference Between Dashes and Hyphens? Grammarly. Grammar. A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. It’s not interchangeable with other types of dashes. A dash is longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause.

Which is the shortest of the three hyphens?

The hyphen (-), the shortest of the three marks, is familiar (sometimes wretchedly so) to most writers. So is the em dash (—), more often called the long dash, or sometimes just the dash. The middle-length en dash (–) is the most mysterious of the three.

How is the en dash used in word processing?

The en dash, which like the em is supplied in word processing character sets, mainly joins inclusive numerals, between which the word to is intended. The en dash also attaches a prefix or suffix to an unhyphenated compound. And often the en dash joins the names of two or more places.

Why is the long dash called an em dash?

Em dashes The em dash—so called because in traditional typesetting it was the length of a capital M —is often known by its more pedestrian, non-alphabetical name, the long dash.