Dashes, strokes, hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes are similar, but not the same.
What are the differences and when should you use them? First of all, what's similar? The rules (like in the APA and the Chicago Manual of Style) indicate that you should never put spaces around any of these horizontal lines.
Nevertheless, newspapers do it all the time.
Personally, I don't like spaces around and use the excuse that "it's the rule.
" Even so, if enough people use spaces, the rule could get changed eventually.
Whether or not you choose to follow the no spaces rule or not, be consistent in your choice.
I had a colleague once tell me that he doesn't care what style guide someone uses, as long as they use one.
Another similarity is that all of these characters (em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens) are all horizontal lines that are vertically centered with the other characters on the line.
Hyphens and strokes Hyphens and strokes are the same thing.
They are straight, horizontal lines that you can usually find on your computer in the number row, to the right of the zero.
More often than not, the underscore character shares the key with the dash, or stroke.
Hyphens are used to make compound words, like self-esteem.
If you don't know if a word should have a hyphen or not, check out a dictionary.
Please note, however, that English is a living language.
When two words come together, like word processor, they are first brought together with a hyphen.
After the word has been around for a while, the hyphen goes away.
That is, once it is a part of common language, it becomes a word in its own right.
Hyphens are also used to break words apart at the end of sentences.
The hyphen should only be put in between syllables, and again, you can check your dictionary to make sure you're breaking the word in the right spot.
It is particularly important to not use spaces with the hyphen when breaking a word apart across lines.
If the hyphen is removed, the word should be whole.
If a space is present, the word is still in pieces.
If you're a Microsoft Word user, you never need to do this manually.
Go into the Page Layout tab and into the Page Setup command group.
Click on hyphenation.
The Word default is to move a word to the beginning of a new line if it doesn't fit on the current line.
You can change that default so hyphenation is used.
If you are fond of full justification, hyphenation can be a good thing.
En-dashes En-dashes are used to denote ranges of numbers.
Again, no spaces should be present.
En-dashes get their name because originally, the en-dash, was the length of the n character on a printing press.
In Word, you can get an en-dash by hitting Control, Num, and - simultaneously.
In HTML, you can get the en-dash by using the code: – Em-dashes Em-dashes have their name because they were originally the length of the m character on the old printing presses.
Em-dashes create appositives like parentheses or a set of commas.
In Word, you can get an em-dash by hitting Alt, Control, Num, and -.
In HTML you can get an em-dash by using the code: —