To my eyes, they make a text look American – they imbue the text with an American accent, if you will. Have you got any examples? I don't have any hard data, but as a British designer with 30 years' experience, I would judge that it is a minority of companies and people in the UK that use em dashes. Many companies and people in the UK do use em dashes. If there isn't one, then pick the one you like-or make up your own style sheet from a combination of style guides. As with other aspects of style, pick the style guide that is being used by your audience. So, it should not be thought of as definitive. (But also note that the use of the en dash recommended in the last two categories-without a surrounding space-does match the use of the en dash recommended by most US style guides.)īut that is only one of the common style guides used in the UK-and many companies and people in the UK do use em dashes. Note that the guidance here to not use the em dash goes against the guidance of most US-based style guides. Use between names of joint authors/creators/performers etc to distinguish from hyphenated names of a single person. ✔ Radio 1 is aimed at the 18–25 age bracket. Use to link concepts or ranges of numbers, with no spaces either side. ✔ The bus was late today – we nearly missed the lecture. Use singly and surrounded by spaces to link two parts of a sentence, in place of a colon. ✔ The library – which was built in the seventeenth century – needs to be repaired. ✔ It was – as far as I could tell – the only example of its kind. Use in a pair in place of round brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces. Having said that, it's generally been the case that more British style guides will say to not use an em dash but, where US style would use an em dash, to use an en dash that's surrounded by spaces.įrom the University of Oxford Style Guide (PDF), page 13: Different style guides, and different people, will use dashes in different ways. This explanation is not intended to be exhaustive (for much more, see chapter 6 in CMOS), but I do hope that it helps to frame the different potential of each length of dash.This is a matter of style, so it's not possible to give a definitive answer on what the correct use is. In interrupted speech, one or two em dashes may be used: “I wasn’t trying to imply-” “Then just what were you trying to do?” Also, the em dash may serve as a sort of bullet point, as in this to-do list: For example, in a bibliographic list, rather than repeating the same author over and over again, three consecutive em dashes (also known as a 3-em dash) stand in for the author’s name. Its use or misuse for this purpose is a matter of taste, and subject to the effect on the writer’s or reader’s “ear.” Em dashes also substitute for something missing. It allows, in a manner similar to parentheses, an additional thought to be added within a sentence by sort of breaking away from that sentence-as I’ve done here. Now, that is a rather fussy use of the en dash that many people ignore, preferring the hyphen. In that example, “pre” is connected to the open compound “World War II” and therefore has to do a little extra work (to bridge the space between the two words it modifies-space that cannot be besmirched by hyphens because “World War II” is a proper noun). En dashes are also used to connect a prefix to a proper open compound: for example, pre–World War II. And in fact en dashes specify any kind of range, which is why they properly appear in indexes when a range of pages is cited (e.g., 147–48). The en dash connects things that are related to each other by distance, as in the May–September issue of a magazine it’s not a May-September issue, because June, July, and August are also ostensibly included in this range. The hyphen connects two things that are intimately related, usually words that function together as a single concept or work together as a joint modifier (e.g., tie-in, toll-free call, two-thirds). I frame it this way because the work they do is roughly related to their length (though I don’t think CMOS puts it this way outright). First of all, there are three lengths of what are all more or less dashes: hyphen (-), en dash (–), and em dash (-). I will try to condense the various bits of information scattered throughout CMOS. What is the difference in usage between an em dash and an en dash?Ī.
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