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The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline.The most common versions are the en dash –, generally longer than the hyphen but shorter than the minus sign; the em dash —, longer than either the en dash or the minus sign; and the horizontal bar —, whose length varies ...
Em dash (— or —, MOS:EMDASH) are even longer and are used solely to set aside a phrase—like this—in a sentence. Em dashes and en dashes, when used to set off parentheticals, are interrupters, along with parentheses (round brackets) and commas; [1] the principal differences are that parentheses are used to offset text of an optional or ...
When connecting two words to signify a range, Chinese generally uses an en dash occupying the space of one character (e.g. 1月—7月 "January to July", which can also be written 1月到7月, with the character 到 in place of the dash). A single em dash character or a tilde may also be used. [16]
Dash, Hyphen-minus-Hyphen-minus: Dash, Hyphen, Minus sign ☞ Index: Manicule, Obelus (medieval usage) · Interpunct: Full-stop, Period, Decimal separator, Dot operator ‽ Interrobang (combined 'Question mark' and 'Exclamation mark') Inverted question and exclamation marks ¡ Inverted exclamation mark: Exclamation mark, Interrobang ¿ Inverted ...
The space before a spaced dash should preferably be a non-breaking space ( ). Em dashes are not spaced. Dashes have the following uses: Unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes are used to indicate interruption in a sentence. In this use, on any one page, either use unspaced em dashes consistently, or use spaced en dashes consistently.
As a consequence, the common hyphen - is most often used in online writings. This situation can be compared to that of users writing in Latin alphabets using the easily available hyphen-minus - over hyphen ‐ , minus − , en dash – , and em dash — .
The hyphen (-), and em dash (—) are used to mark increasing levels of separation. The hyphen is put between components of a word, and the em-dash to separate words in a sentence, in particular to mark longer appositions or qualifications that in English would typically be put in parentheses, and as a replacement for a copula:
The objection that em-dashes and spaced em-dashes are space-filling and visually arresting misses the point: they are meant to be. An em-dash is used for emphasis and dramatic effect, to make a contrast or a pointed aside. Consequently they should be used sparingly — especially in encyclopedic prose (although they can be useful on talk pages).