I didn’t even know an n-dash was a thing. More excitingly, I didn’t know this: “On an iPhone, if you lean gently on the hyphen key, an en dash will present itself to you, as well as an em dash and a bullet (that is: •).” Thanks!
“Hyphens join. En dashes join things that hyphens won’t suffice for. Em dashes separate.” Beautifully succinct. The more deeply one understands a thing, the more simply one can explain it.
FWIW, “Epstein–Barr” is what I learned many years ago as an ESL production editor at Prentice Hall, and I like it—I’m a fan of en dashes, and willing to make a case for them in ambiguous cases—but I can certainly understand your aesthetic objection! You see that en dash and you want “Epstein” or “Barr” to be part of a larger phrase. Makes sense.
I also think that in constructions like Epstein-Barr, an en dash simply wouldn't be buying you anything you really need, and as much as I'm a fan, as you well know by now, of gross excess, I have my limits.
T'other day, at Bluesky, someone was attempting to make the argument to me that the tumultuous saga of Alsace and Lorraine demanded the construction Alsace–Lorraine. When I explained, or attempted to explain, that en dashes do not convey history, he got quite perturbed and blocked me.
How delicious! On seeing the title of your newsletter, I opened this before anything else on my phone this morning. (Another E.M. Forster here, not the British quiz show.
I then proceeded to read it aloud to my husband, laughter punctuating each line. He said he’d never known the difference, wherein I explained to him how to effect them on an iPhone keyboard just before you went into glorious detail about Mac vs. PC. That elicited more laughter!
Yup. I misread it. And this works only when your keyboard has a separate number pad. But try ctl and the hyphen on the number keypad. Making Benjamin’s point perfectly, I guess.
In Word, Outlook, and other Microsoft apps, the easiest route to an en dash is Ctrl-[minus sign on the numerical keyboard].
An em dash via that method is Ctrl-shift-[minus sign], but one will also appear if you just type two hyphens, without spaces, between two words.
In apps where those shortcuts don't work, I've historically resigned myself to using a hyphen for an en dash and a double-hyphen for an em dash. But now that I know the alt codes work anywhere (em dash is alt-0151, for the record), I will never again settle for those wretched substitutes.
Alt-0151 and alt-0150 are part of my fingers' muscle memory by now. I don't even have to think about it! Also alt-0133, for an ellipsis … in documents where they have to be coded or where it matters what the dots look like, so I have to find and replace.
I love the en dash. Thank you for writing about it—I don't think I've ever been part of an appreciation group for this particular bit of punctuation. The *em* dash, though! It sure has garnered adoration. (I also love the em dash. But it has fans sufficient.)
I teach this stuff for a living—that is, I teach legal writing, so "this stuff" in the broadest sense—and I don't really understand en dashes. My students have been brought up in the Hyphenate Randomly If At All school of thought, and hardly any of them have ever even heard of an em dash. In the necessary triage of topics to cover in a semester, "AI is not an acceptable substitute for actual legal analysis" eclipses pretty much everything in the dash-hyphen family.
Cher–as–Calamity Jane is a show I would pay real money to see. (Typing that, I learned by accident that option+equal sign will give you the "not equal to" sign, which I am very happy to learn.)
I am happy to view George O'Brien in any way the historical record permits and may have viewed him in my mind in ways the historical record does not permit.
If you do a little image-googling of our George you will certainly find that he is presented quite nicely by the historical record in ways that are quite bracing, even if they may not fulfill the entire contents of your imagination.
Thank you for this wonderful deep dive into dashes, Benjamin. I didn’t know about en and em dashes. This is why I’m glad you’re on Substack. Although I was a little disappointed with your example of “sports scores”, I would have preferred “the Mets clobbered the Yankees, 14–2.” 😄
If you have your copy of DE handy, do go look at the footnote on p. 64, which I bet will make you laugh. And the "friend" in question was in fact my editor.
I've enjoyed the discussion of dashes on Bluesky and appreciate this longer piece. You've convinced me of the value of em dashes (even if the article is about en dashes).
Years ago, in the days when laser printers were new and Times New Roman was pretty much the default, I really hated em dashes. The glyph was significantly wider than a capital M, and it seemed out of proportion. (With access to more typefaces, I've notice, the size relative to the M varies.)
Some years later, I read in Robert Binghurst's Elements of Typographic Style, "Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases."* I followed Binghurst's advice for years, not knowing it was the style used in Britain until you mentioned it a few days ago on Bsky.
And now, I'm using em dashes again thanks to your insights.
It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know anything about Binghurst other than his book. In fact, he's Canadian— Which might explain why he prefers the British space-en-space style. (And please note the em-space-capital, which you clarified for me in an earlier comment. 😊)
This comment appeared on a long-ago post on the Subversive Copy Editor blog (Carol Fisher Saller's, of course):
"Of course, the only practical use of the en dash is as subtle code to communicate, from one publishing professional to another, the abstract concept, 'I am copy editor. Hear me roar.' Recognizing the en dash can be like a secret handshake to our club."
I could be accused of being overly enamored of em dashes, but I have been neglectful of en dashes. Now that I know what they are for, I will do my best to add them to my haberdashery.
I fear that I, as well, am an overuser of em dashes--I like the look and I tend to write long sentences--and an unfortunate underuser of the good old semicolon.
A supremely satisfying explanation that I look forward to sharing with my spouse. He is a mechanical engineer by trade, and an editor by passion. The dear man put down his R&D for a few years to edit a technical magazine; those poor scientific authors didn’t know what hit them.
In that phase, I discovered he also cared about using the appropriate dash and was ready to take on corporate titans in the quest for readability. Be still my heart.
As someone who values the implicit aural cues of punctuation—probably from a lifetime of reading scripts aloud—I am interested in your take, if any, on the best way to differentiate a true parenthetical (the one above could go either way, I think) from something–better–set–off with em dashes. And thanks to your notes I now know how to make all those things straight from the keyboard without tricking autocorrect to do them and then backspacing.
I think that that's a very interesting question with, alas, no particularly straightforward (or single) answer. I guess that there's a confiding tone to parentheses that is different from the interrupting quality of dashes? And I have, speaking of scripts, on occasion suggested that the use of parentheses, particularly the excessive use of parentheses, begins to give the impression of a dandy in a Restoration comedy stepping down to the footlights, curling his hand beside his cheek, and saying something saucy.
Ultimately, truly really: Follow your ear. You'll know.
You know, I’m sure all 3,963 of us feel indebted to you for including George O’ Brien in this piece. And, wearing a sweater he must have knitted himself.
It’s this combination of style with written style that is such a delight.
Oh fabulous, for spacious eyes...wait that's part of a song that went wrong, but your post is no less fabulous despite my mental lapin leaping down into the warren and, coming to a fork in the road, taking it—bunny being a baseball fan and therefore invoking the great Yogi Berra.
My question—and I do have one—concerns the argument about whether to use spaces on both sides of any kind of dash. Seeing this puts me in mind of a jack-o'-lantern's alternately toothless grin. I see you are of the same mind that inserting spaces is just plain icky, but if you care to state that opinion publicly, it would be helpful as both a confirmation and a source of reference.
I had no idea that gap-toothed en dashes go around in the UK masquerading as em dashes: the audacity! It is useful to understand that point, however, so thank you for that.
Could that be em-dash and en-dash? Also, we'd save a lot of ink if we wrote m--dash and n-dash.
Never use a jot or a tittle more punctuation than you absolutely need.
I didn’t even know an n-dash was a thing. More excitingly, I didn’t know this: “On an iPhone, if you lean gently on the hyphen key, an en dash will present itself to you, as well as an em dash and a bullet (that is: •).” Thanks!
Isn't that fun? It's like finding out where the © is, or the ®, or how to do è and é and ü and ç!
“Hyphens join. En dashes join things that hyphens won’t suffice for. Em dashes separate.” Beautifully succinct. The more deeply one understands a thing, the more simply one can explain it.
FWIW, “Epstein–Barr” is what I learned many years ago as an ESL production editor at Prentice Hall, and I like it—I’m a fan of en dashes, and willing to make a case for them in ambiguous cases—but I can certainly understand your aesthetic objection! You see that en dash and you want “Epstein” or “Barr” to be part of a larger phrase. Makes sense.
I also think that in constructions like Epstein-Barr, an en dash simply wouldn't be buying you anything you really need, and as much as I'm a fan, as you well know by now, of gross excess, I have my limits.
T'other day, at Bluesky, someone was attempting to make the argument to me that the tumultuous saga of Alsace and Lorraine demanded the construction Alsace–Lorraine. When I explained, or attempted to explain, that en dashes do not convey history, he got quite perturbed and blocked me.
Such is life.
Also, what's that thing that Gertrude Stein said about Ezra Pound? A village explainer. Fine if you're a village. If not, not.
I do like to go on, but sometimes, indeed, simplest explanations are best explanations.
(And of course: Thank you.)
How delicious! On seeing the title of your newsletter, I opened this before anything else on my phone this morning. (Another E.M. Forster here, not the British quiz show.
I then proceeded to read it aloud to my husband, laughter punctuating each line. He said he’d never known the difference, wherein I explained to him how to effect them on an iPhone keyboard just before you went into glorious detail about Mac vs. PC. That elicited more laughter!
Thank you for starting my day so marvelously!
❤️
And don't think I didn't notice that artfully wielded "effect."
En dash on a PC: alt-0150, among other ways.
Or ctl-shift-hyphen.
Huh, ctrl-shift-hyphen just gives me a regular hyphen.
Typing [space] -- [space] and then another word transforms that double hyphen into an en dash, but then I have to go delete those spaces around it.
In the words of the great Elaine Benes: I don't know how you guys walk around with those things.
Yup. I misread it. And this works only when your keyboard has a separate number pad. But try ctl and the hyphen on the number keypad. Making Benjamin’s point perfectly, I guess.
I have this bookmarked and use it frequently:
https://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm
Thus, I avoid having to do the hokey-pokey, although that would be a fun way to take a break...
Excellent! Thanks.
You're welcome. You will probably memorize the ones you use often. I did, eventually.
That's a thorough a list as I've seen anywhere; thank you!
You are welcome!
In Word, Outlook, and other Microsoft apps, the easiest route to an en dash is Ctrl-[minus sign on the numerical keyboard].
An em dash via that method is Ctrl-shift-[minus sign], but one will also appear if you just type two hyphens, without spaces, between two words.
In apps where those shortcuts don't work, I've historically resigned myself to using a hyphen for an en dash and a double-hyphen for an em dash. But now that I know the alt codes work anywhere (em dash is alt-0151, for the record), I will never again settle for those wretched substitutes.
Alt-0151 and alt-0150 are part of my fingers' muscle memory by now. I don't even have to think about it! Also alt-0133, for an ellipsis … in documents where they have to be coded or where it matters what the dots look like, so I have to find and replace.
I love the en dash. Thank you for writing about it—I don't think I've ever been part of an appreciation group for this particular bit of punctuation. The *em* dash, though! It sure has garnered adoration. (I also love the em dash. But it has fans sufficient.)
Indeed, em dashes need no encouragement these days.
I teach this stuff for a living—that is, I teach legal writing, so "this stuff" in the broadest sense—and I don't really understand en dashes. My students have been brought up in the Hyphenate Randomly If At All school of thought, and hardly any of them have ever even heard of an em dash. In the necessary triage of topics to cover in a semester, "AI is not an acceptable substitute for actual legal analysis" eclipses pretty much everything in the dash-hyphen family.
Cher–as–Calamity Jane is a show I would pay real money to see. (Typing that, I learned by accident that option+equal sign will give you the "not equal to" sign, which I am very happy to learn.)
I am happy to view George O'Brien in any way the historical record permits and may have viewed him in my mind in ways the historical record does not permit.
If you do a little image-googling of our George you will certainly find that he is presented quite nicely by the historical record in ways that are quite bracing, even if they may not fulfill the entire contents of your imagination.
Come for the punctuation and copy-editing insights, stay for the shared George O'Brien thirst.
Thank you for this wonderful deep dive into dashes, Benjamin. I didn’t know about en and em dashes. This is why I’m glad you’re on Substack. Although I was a little disappointed with your example of “sports scores”, I would have preferred “the Mets clobbered the Yankees, 14–2.” 😄
If you have your copy of DE handy, do go look at the footnote on p. 64, which I bet will make you laugh. And the "friend" in question was in fact my editor.
❤️
I'll be home tomorrow and will look it up!
I looked up p. 64. That’s hilarious!
Oh yay!
I've enjoyed the discussion of dashes on Bluesky and appreciate this longer piece. You've convinced me of the value of em dashes (even if the article is about en dashes).
Years ago, in the days when laser printers were new and Times New Roman was pretty much the default, I really hated em dashes. The glyph was significantly wider than a capital M, and it seemed out of proportion. (With access to more typefaces, I've notice, the size relative to the M varies.)
Some years later, I read in Robert Binghurst's Elements of Typographic Style, "Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases."* I followed Binghurst's advice for years, not knowing it was the style used in Britain until you mentioned it a few days ago on Bsky.
And now, I'm using em dashes again thanks to your insights.
* Fuller citation here: https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/2009/09/where-to-use-en-and-em-dashes-lupton-vs-bringhurst/
Thank you, Rich, for the kind comments and the additional information.
To be honest, I love the extravagance of Victorian punctuation—!
It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know anything about Binghurst other than his book. In fact, he's Canadian— Which might explain why he prefers the British space-en-space style. (And please note the em-space-capital, which you clarified for me in an earlier comment. 😊)
Gorgeously done.
And yes, I'd imagine that his Canadianness tells us a lot!
Learning, laughing, doing the hokey-pokey….preach, BD ! For real, I didn’t know these distinctions. Thanks!
This comment appeared on a long-ago post on the Subversive Copy Editor blog (Carol Fisher Saller's, of course):
"Of course, the only practical use of the en dash is as subtle code to communicate, from one publishing professional to another, the abstract concept, 'I am copy editor. Hear me roar.' Recognizing the en dash can be like a secret handshake to our club."
I could be accused of being overly enamored of em dashes, but I have been neglectful of en dashes. Now that I know what they are for, I will do my best to add them to my haberdashery.
They're all there to be used (well)!
I fear that I, as well, am an overuser of em dashes--I like the look and I tend to write long sentences--and an unfortunate underuser of the good old semicolon.
A supremely satisfying explanation that I look forward to sharing with my spouse. He is a mechanical engineer by trade, and an editor by passion. The dear man put down his R&D for a few years to edit a technical magazine; those poor scientific authors didn’t know what hit them.
In that phase, I discovered he also cared about using the appropriate dash and was ready to take on corporate titans in the quest for readability. Be still my heart.
Fabulous. Please give him my best regards.
As someone who values the implicit aural cues of punctuation—probably from a lifetime of reading scripts aloud—I am interested in your take, if any, on the best way to differentiate a true parenthetical (the one above could go either way, I think) from something–better–set–off with em dashes. And thanks to your notes I now know how to make all those things straight from the keyboard without tricking autocorrect to do them and then backspacing.
I think that that's a very interesting question with, alas, no particularly straightforward (or single) answer. I guess that there's a confiding tone to parentheses that is different from the interrupting quality of dashes? And I have, speaking of scripts, on occasion suggested that the use of parentheses, particularly the excessive use of parentheses, begins to give the impression of a dandy in a Restoration comedy stepping down to the footlights, curling his hand beside his cheek, and saying something saucy.
Ultimately, truly really: Follow your ear. You'll know.
You know, I’m sure all 3,963 of us feel indebted to you for including George O’ Brien in this piece. And, wearing a sweater he must have knitted himself.
It’s this combination of style with written style that is such a delight.
We're always going to be here for George!
And thank you!
Oh fabulous, for spacious eyes...wait that's part of a song that went wrong, but your post is no less fabulous despite my mental lapin leaping down into the warren and, coming to a fork in the road, taking it—bunny being a baseball fan and therefore invoking the great Yogi Berra.
My question—and I do have one—concerns the argument about whether to use spaces on both sides of any kind of dash. Seeing this puts me in mind of a jack-o'-lantern's alternately toothless grin. I see you are of the same mind that inserting spaces is just plain icky, but if you care to state that opinion publicly, it would be helpful as both a confirmation and a source of reference.
I had no idea that gap-toothed en dashes go around in the UK masquerading as em dashes: the audacity! It is useful to understand that point, however, so thank you for that.