Dashes replace otherwise mandatory punctuation, such as the commas after Iowa and 2020 in the following examples: Without dash: The man from Ames, Iowa, arrived. With dash: The man—he was from Ames, Iowa—arrived. Without dash: The May 1, 2020, edition of the Ames Sentinel arrived in June.
The dash (—), also called the em dash, is the long horizontal bar, much longer than a hyphen. Few keyboards have a dash, but a word processor can usually produce one in one way or another.
Use dashes to mark the beginning and end of a series, which might otherwise get confused, with the rest of the sentence: Example: The three female characters—the wife, the nun, and the jockey—are the incarnation of excellence. Dashes are also used to mark the interruption of a sentence in dialogue: Example: “Help!
1. To set off material for emphasis. Think of dashes as the opposite of parentheses. Where parentheses indicate that the reader should put less emphasis on the enclosed material, dashes indicate that the reader should pay more attention to the material between the dashes.
Dash
A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that's used to join words or parts of words. It's not interchangeable with other types of dashes. A dash is longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause.
To create an em-dash on a Windows computer, hold down the [Alt] key and type 0151 on the numeric keypad. To create an em-dash on a Mac computer, hold down the shift and option/alt and type -. An en dash is the width of the letter "n" and is expressed in plain text as a hyphen ( - ).
A hyphen joins two or more words together while a dash separates words into parenthetical statements. The two are sometimes confused because they look so similar, but their usage is different. Hyphens are not separated by spaces, while a dash has a space on either side.
A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text (not at the bottom: that's an underscore). It's longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Dashes are used to separate groups of words, not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does.
There are two types of dash. The en dash is approximately the length of the letter n, and the em dash the length of the letter m. The shorter en dash (–) is used to mark ranges and with the meaning “to” in phrases like “Dover–Calais crossing.”
Turns out it originates as a navy term for flag signalling which has seen cross over into other parts of the navy (e.g. marines): "In addition to the 68 flags in the bag, you have a tackline. A tackline is a length of halyard approximately 6 feet long; the exact length depends upon the size of flags in use.
The em dash can function like a comma, a colon, or parenthesis. Like commas and parentheses, em dashes set off extra information, such as examples, explanatory or descriptive phrases, or supplemental facts. Like a colon, an em dash introduces a clause that explains or expands upon something that precedes it.
To insert an em dash, click where you want to insert the em dash and then press Ctrl + Alt + – (minus sign on the numeric keypad). To insert an en dash, click where you want to insert the en dash and then press Ctrl + – (minus sign on the numeric keypad). If this doesn't work, press NumLock on the numeric keypad.
Two em dashes can be used to indicate missing portions of a word, whether unknown or intentionally omitted.
The comma serves no purpose. You are using dashes to set off a clarifying clause in exactly the same way as you would use brackets. Remove it and you will see that the comma is redundant: "If you like world music you will really enjoy this festival."
How to type an em dash on Windows
Aug 24, 2021
Should You Capitalize the First Letter After an Em Dash? No matter how you use an em dash, whether it's replacing other forms of punctuation, representing interruption in the text, or as part of a missing word, you do not capitalize the first letter following it.
When a colon introduces a list of things, do not capitalize the first word after the colon unless it is a proper noun. When a colon introduces a phrase or an incomplete sentence that is meant to add information to the sentence before it, do not capitalize the first word after the colon unless it is a proper noun.
Most commonly, the semicolon is used between two independent clauses (i.e., clauses that could stand alone as separate sentences) when a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) is omitted.