Several years ago, another professor in my department taught students about the use of the dash. Almost immediately I noted that these same students were using dashes all over the place in stories they wrote for the student newspaper I advised—quite willy-nilly, actually. They had all become dash-happy.
Now when I teach students about the dash, I caution them to avoid this serious malady because, like a lot of things in this world, just because you can use it doesn’t mean you should. I think every grammar book I own admonishes that the dash is to be used sparingly.
Certainly, the dash is an appropriate punctuation mark when used in the right places. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary 4th Edition—the official dictionary of the Associated Press—an em dash (“a dash the width of a capital M in a given font”) is the punctuation mark that is “used to indicate breaks in thought, parenthetical remarks, dialog, etc.”
Microsoft Word helps users create this punctuation mark by automatically squishing two hyphens together when you type a word followed by two hyphens then the next word—without any spacing between. Word will also create an en dash. This dash is the width of a capital N. You get it by typing a word followed by a space, then one or two hyphens (works either way), space, then another word. According to the website, Punctuationmatters.com, the en dash is used correctly to join numbers or words that indicate a range: July – October or 2011 – 2014. Otherwise, the em dash is the one you want.
So, when you are using the dash to indicate breaks in thought, you want the em dash.
Note the differences in the width of the dash.
em dash: —
en dash: –
Richard Nordquist, in his article “Between the Dashes,” points out several professional writers who make good use of what he calls “interrupting dashes.” He shares recent examples from magazines where the authors used them as “a handy way of slipping details into sentences”:
- Very little grows here. Yet it is the home of quinoa real—“royal quinoa”—whose seeds are the world market’s gold standard. . . .
(Lisa M. Hamilton, “The Quinoa Quarrel.” Harper’s, May 2014)
- Cardinal Walter Kasper—short, sturdy, 81—lives at No. 1 Piazza della Città Leonina, a brick apartment building near the old Vatican walls. . . .
(Paul Elie, “The Pope in the Attic.” The Atlantic, May 2014)
Nordquist concludes with these observations:
In almost every example, a pair of commas or parentheses could also do the job, but those marks lack the emphatic dash of the dash. Commas can lead to clutter, and parentheses seem to whisper (inviting us to skip over points that used to be relegated to footnotes).
Like any device, interrupting dashes lose their power and effectiveness through overuse, and too many of them can quickly become distracting. So good writers ration them.
Nevertheless, the next time you want to emphasize a detail clearly and concisely, don’t be afraid to try on a pair of dashes.
Punctuation guru Lynne Truss writes in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves—”the Runaway #1 British Bestseller,” according to the book jacket—says using the dash is like lowering your voice as a way to add emphasis. And it has been around a long time. She offers a few examples.
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery.
* Byron, Don Juan, 1818-20
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
* Emily Dickinson,”Because I could not stop for Death,” 1863
The dash, Truss explains, has become “the enemy of grammar.” She blames email and texting where the dash is now used to do the job of all other punctuation—because it is easy to use and easier to see than commas and periods.
I use the dash in my personal writing, but I still discourage my students unless they have mastered its proper use—dash-happy use is just annoying.
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