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to 6 p.m.-certainly showed concern for customers’ manifold circumstances. The butteriness of the pastries did say something about an appropriate level of commitment to decadence-at least there was that.Īnd the wide range of its hours of operation-6 a.m. In this particular task, em dashes occupy a kind of middle ground among the three: when commas do the job, the material is most closely related to what’s around it, and when parentheses do the job, the material is most distantly related to what’s around it when dashes do the job the material is somewhere in the middle.
#Why isn em dash on keyboard how to#
How to type one, however, depends on your machine. This website prefers the latter, its style requiring the closely held em dash in running text. Most newspapers insert a space before and after the dash, and many popular magazines do the same, but most books and journals omit spacing, closing whatever comes before and after the em dash right up next to it. The em dash is sometimes considered a less formal equivalent of the colon and parenthesis, but in truth it’s used in all kinds of writing, including the most formal-the choice of which mark to use is really a matter of personal preference. Like a colon, an em dash introduces a clause that explains or expands upon something that precedes it. Like commas and parentheses, em dashes set off extra information, such as examples, explanatory or descriptive phrases, or supplemental facts. The em dash can function like a comma, a colon, or parenthesis. It looks like - or sometimes (as when one’s word processing program fails to convert it) - and it’s called the “common dash,” or “em dash.” The two names are well-earned this dash is the most common true dash, and it’s the approximate width of a capital M. There are various punctuation items that can be described as dashes, and we will get to them all, but we’ll begin with the most useful, and most used. They take the reader aside, and then draw that reader to the next bit like a good dance partner in the lead. This is one reason why a good editor is such a tremendous asset.īut if you know the difference between the hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash, you’re doing your all-star editor a big favor.Īnd when your book is ready to share with your readers, check out other posts on Authority.Pub for the next steps in marketing, setting up ads, getting reviews, etc.Among punctuation marks, dashes have a certain panache. That said, sometimes we mix and match and hope for the best. And parentheses are not the same as dashes. Em dashes make it even easier to write the way we speak - whether you’re writing a blog post, some dialogue for your story, or a nonfiction book.Īnd while your editor might recommend removing some of them (especially if you happen to use one in every paragraph - no judging here), ultimately, whether you keep those em dashes or replace them with commas or parentheses is your choice to make. Now that you know how to type a dash, maybe you’re slightly worried that you’ll become an em dash fiend.
#Why isn em dash on keyboard full#
If the usual keystroke shortcuts don’t work on your laptop, though, it can’t hurt to try attaching an external full keyboard or numeric keypad.