Dear Randalf…

You’ve come to the right person—I’m an em-dashaholic, and their overuse is an urge I constantly stifle. It’s just that they’re so darned useful! Em-dashes are those long dashes that indicate a break in a line of thought—and I love interrupting myself. You can use them to add dramatic emphasis or an explanation to the main clause as I have here. They have more kick than a comma, which is why I adore them. Em-dashes are the length of the “m” in your chosen font, with no spaces on either side. Their close buddies are en-dashes, which are half the measure of the “m” and signal a range, such as 1 – 4. En-dashes do have spaces on either side of them. Now, don’t confuse those little guys with the even shorter hyphen, which is a dash that separates numbers that are not a range, like a phone number (555-7676), as well as compound words such as “all-out.” Hyphens touch the letters or numbers on either side.

You can find both em- and en-dashes in your word processing program’s symbols section. Or make the computer do it for you:

• Em-dash: using your hyphen key, type two dashes between words with no spaces on either side and the program will automatically change the dashes to a single em-dash when you’re done with the second word. So “thoughtdashdashand” becomes “thought—and”
• En-dash: type a single dash with your hyphen key, with single spaces on both sides, when you want to indicate a range. Your program will automatically change your dash to an en-dash, turning “1 dash 4” into “1 – 4”

Happy writing!

The Editor