Do You Know About the En Dash?

 

A hyphen is a short mark that connects words, as in a "good-looking car." An em dash, which most people think of as a dash, separates thoughts and indicates a change of sentence structure — this is an example. But there's also something called an en dash, which is longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash.  It's nonexistent in AP style but an important part of Chicago style, where it works like a comma on steroids, connecting things like numbers with prefixes, as in pre–1950. Here's what you need to know.

 

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Tags: COPY EDITING, EN DASH VS EM DASH, GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION

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