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Know your dashes: the hyphen, en dash and em dash

What is an Em dash, En Dash, Hyphen - and when and how to use them table with examples

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What is an em dash? And when should you use one? And how is that different from a hyphen? And what's an en dash? It's all here for you to know your dashes.

OK, so you can get a little over the top about these, but I do notice when a hyphen is used to add a thought in text rather than the em dash, which is better made for it—and it's much nicer than using brackets or parentheses ().

And—to go the full mile—why not use an en dash when you’re separating your page numbers 1–5, or months May–Sep, next time?

Didn’t spot the difference?

- hypen · short

– en dash · medium

— em dash · long

I had a lot of fun talking about this in the podcast episode on Know Your Dashes: hyphen, en dash, em dash

How to Type En Dash and Em Dash on both Mac and Windows

Typing them on a Mac

En dash: Option + -

Em dash: Shift + Option + -

Typing them on a Windows PC

En dash: Alt + type 0150 on the number pad

Em dash: Alt + type 0151 on the number pad

Many writing programs will also turn two hyphens followed by a space into an em dash for you.

All sorts of grammar and writing advice in the excellent The Elements of Style by Strunk and White .

More Writing and Grammar Ideas Explained

Also see:

Updated from the original

Published 9 Mar 2016

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What does biweekly mean to you? How about bimonthly or biannually? While each of us will have our own, perhaps unambiguous, reaction to it, the word biweekly is interpreted as "twice a week" or "once every two weeks." I know this from personal experience of confusing people en-masse. The dictionary even carefully, if unhelpfully, defines it as meaning either. It's a strange quirk of the English language. But it's so handy, what to do? An excellent, concise solution is the word fortnightly. Fortnightly has the helpful unambiguous quality that it means "once every fortnight," so "once every two weeks." And it's also just one word. If something happens "two times a week," I think you need to spell it out or use "twice a week" or perhaps "every Monday and Thursday." Or perhaps semi-weekly might give you some mileage. The same source of confusion applies to the words bimonthly and biannually—to be sure of being understood correctly, it's best to avoid them. Phrases like "every second month," "every two months," "twice a month," or "two times each year" are helpful here. Ambiguity in how we talk about time is also illustrated in some of my favourite research done by Lera Boroditsky. For example, if I say, "The meeting on Wednesday has been moved forward by two days," when is the meeting now? It turns out that people are split on whether the meeting is now on Monday or on Friday. And I remember a fascinating example of the Kuuk Thayore aboriginal people in Australia who don't use words like left and right, and instead, always use the cardinal directions like north, south, east and west—"Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg". There's a taster in her talk, How Language Shapes the Way we Think.What does biweekly mean to you? How about bimonthly or biannually? While each of us will have our own, perhaps unambiguous, reaction to it, the word biweekly is interpreted as "twice a week" or "once every two weeks." I know this from personal experience of confusing people en-masse. The dictionary even carefully, if unhelpfully, defines it as meaning either. It's a strange quirk of the English language. But it's so handy, what to do? An excellent, concise solution is the word fortnightly. Fortnightly has the helpful unambiguous quality that it means "once every fortnight," so "once every two weeks." And it's also just one word. If something happens "two times a week," I think you need to spell it out or use "twice a week" or perhaps "every Monday and Thursday." Or perhaps semi-weekly might give you some mileage. The same source of confusion applies to the words bimonthly and biannually—to be sure of being understood correctly, it's best to avoid them. Phrases like "every second month," "every two months," "twice a month," or "two times each year" are helpful here. Ambiguity in how we talk about time is also illustrated in some of my favourite research done by Lera Boroditsky. For example, if I say, "The meeting on Wednesday has been moved forward by two days," when is the meeting now? It turns out that people are split on whether the meeting is now on Monday or on Friday. And I remember a fascinating example of the Kuuk Thayore aboriginal people in Australia who don't use words like left and right, and instead, always use the cardinal directions like north, south, east and west—"Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg". There's a taster in her talk, How Language Shapes the Way we Think.

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