![]() ![]() You can check out our service with a 500-word free trial today. If you’d like a punctuation pro to check your work for dodgy dashes, as well as any other writing errors, our proofreaders are here to help. Check out this post on how to type these dashes with Windows and Mac devices. You may have noticed that neither en nor em dashes can be found on a regular QWERTY keyboard. The main difference is that US English uses em dashes-usually without spaces-in place of parentheses, while UK English prefers the shorter en dash – with a space either side – for the same purpose. Summary: En Dashes and Em Dashes in US and UK EnglishĪs we’ve seen, en dashes-the width of an n-and em dashes-the width of an m-are used in much the same way on both sides of the pond. For example, the Associated Press style book, which is often used in magazine publishing, says that there should be a space on both sides of an em dash. Usually, you don’t need to put spaces around em dashes, but you should check your style guide to be sure. For essays, dissertations, and other formal writing, use brackets and colons to separate information from the main text. Therefore, you should avoid using em dashes this way in academic writing. When you use em dashes instead of parentheses (or brackets) like this, your writing is usually more dramatic. I named my pets-Loki, Thor, and Wanda-after my favorite Marvel characters. When you’re writing for an American audience, you can use em dashes as an alternative to parentheses: Make sure you switch on the Num Lock from the keyboard and you type the number from the Numpad and not from the top row of the keyboard. Here are the two simple steps to type the using Alt code from your keyboard. You can use one when somebody suddenly stops talking like this:Īn em dash can also be used to show that one speaker is talking over another: To type the using the keyboard you can the Alt code from the shortcode section. “Hey Jude” is over seven minutes long – 40% of it is “na na na!”Įm dashes are used in all English dialects to indicate interrupted speech. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter! Moreover, UK English allows for a spaced en dash to be used like a colon to introduce new information: The most popular Beatles song – “Hey Jude” – was in the charts for 19 weeks. If you’re writing for UK readers, you can also use pairs of spaced en dashes instead of parentheses: In all of these uses, the en dash is used without spaces. Mark Knopfler sang about the Mason–Dixon line.Įn dashes can also be used in place of a hyphen when a prefix comes before a compound noun or adjective: The en dash is sometimes also used in the same way as an em dash, especially in UK English in this case, it takes a space on either side. The Keith Urban Tour, July 8th–December 17th 2022įeelings run high in the Marvel–DC debate. The longer em dash () is used to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence. The en dash is used in all English dialects in the following four ways: ![]() We’ve written before about en dashes and em dashes, but today’s post is about how these punctuation marks are used differently in US and UK English. En Dashes and Em Dashes in US and UK EnglishĮven though the difference between the en dash and the em dash might be only a millimeter, confusing them in your writing can be a big problem. ![]()
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