Dear Master’s student,
(Em) Dash
(If
you’re a big punctuation wonk, you can read about the difference between the en dash
and em dash.) On traditional keyboards, there is actually
no designated key for the dash. (This is
probably one reason people aren’t sure what a dash is, or how to use one.) Never fear!
If you use Word as your word processing software, creating a dash is pretty
simple:
1. Type
the word before the dash (do not hit “spacebar” after the word).
2. Hit
the hyphen (-) key twice (do not hit “spacebar” after the hyphens).
3. Type
the word after the dash.
4. Voilà!
Once you hit “spacebar” after the post-dash word, Word will fuse the hyphens
into one big dash.
If you’ve
never done this before, try it out!
There’s nothing like the thrill of seeing your first dash born of two
tiny hyphens.
The dash
can be used as commas would be around a phrase to which you want to draw
attention:
Barkley—the only person I know to
complete all the levels of Ninja Warrior—will join us for dinner.
You could
also render this with commas or parenthesis:
Barkley, the only person I know
to complete all the levels of Ninja Warrior, will join us for dinner.
Barkley (the only person I know
to complete all the levels of Ninja Warrior) will join us for dinner.
All three
versions mean the same thing, but there is an implied difference in the
importance of that phrase surrounded by the dashes/commas/parenthesis. The dash is used to emphasize the
information; it indicates the phrase it bookends is more important than the rest of the sentence. Conversely, parentheses typically suggest
that something is less important than
the rest of the sentence; commas are generally used for information of equal
importance.
I hope
this tip has been an informative—and enjoyable—read.
James
