A hyphen is a minus sign is a dash, but that’s not entirely true. There are different types of dashes available for your writing pleasure. Before the media releases a panicked news flash, know which is which and how to use them in Microsoft Word.
No one wants to be a typesetter, but when you use a word processor you effectively become one. Therefore you need to know the difference between a mere mortal dash, an en dash, and an em dash.
First there is the regular dash, the hyphen, the minus. You can find it on two keyboard keys: one just above the P key and another next to the 9 on the numeric keypad.
Second comes the en dash. It may, in fact, look exactly like the regular dash but in proportionally-spaced type an en dash is the exact same width as a lower case N. To type an en dash in Microsoft Word, press Ctrl+minus, where minus is the dash key on the numeric keypad.
Finally there’s the em dash. It’s a long dash, the same width as the lower case letter M. To type an em dash in Word, press Alt+Ctrl+minus.
Here are the three dashes:
| Regular dash | – |
| En dash | – |
| Em dash | — |
But that’s not all. There are also en and em spaces as well. Next post, I’ll discuss them and how you can produce each in Microsoft Word.
How about letting us know when it’s proper to use each too? 🙂
Comment by jamh51 — August 15, 2008 @ 1:27 pm
You’re asking too much! 😉
The em dash is preferred instead of using the double hyphen -- like that. So instead of writing -- you put a — in there instead.
The en dash is preferred for ranges, instead of the hyphen or minus. So you’d write 2002–2006 instead of 2002-2006.
Comment by admin — August 15, 2008 @ 2:16 pm