dash

History

In her book on ellipsis, Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission, Anne Toner suggests that the first dash that has been found in printed English is from a letter in 1580 and the first use of the dash in English drama dates to a 1588 translation of Terence's Andria, by Maurice Kyffin, where it is composed of a line of hyphens:

In 1588 an edition of Terence's play the Andria was translated into English

by Maurice Kyffin and printed by Thomas East. This play seems to

contain the earliest markings of [the dash] in English drama [...].

On three occasions, a series of hyphens marks an incomplete utterance.

In two of the three instances, one character is interrupted by another.

In the second example, the speaker interrupts himself. The printer seems

to have considered carefully the appearance of the mark, as the number of

hyphens depends on whether they are placed alongside another mark

of punctuation.

This was a brilliant innovation. There is no play printed before Kyffin's

Andria and listed in W. W. Greg's Bibliography of English Printed Drama

that marks unfinished sentences in this way. This is not to say that these

were the first [dashes] in English print. There are appearances of the mark

Types of dash

Usage varies both within English and within other languages, but the usual conventions for the most common dashes in printed English text are these:

An (unspaced) em dash or a spaced en dash can be used to mark a break in a sentence, and a pair can be used to set off a parenthetical phrase. For example: Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons—his kitchen looked as if a clown had exploded.A flock of sparrows—some of them juveniles—alighted and sang. Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons – his kitchen looked as if a clown had exploded.A flock of sparrows – some of them juveniles – alighted and sang.

An en dash, but not an em dash, indicates spans or differentiation, where it may replace "and", "to", or "through". For example: The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was fought in western Pennsylvania and along the present US–Canada border

An em dash or horizontal bar, but not an en dash, is used to set off the source of a direct quotation. For example: Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

A horizontal bar (also called quotation dash) or the em dash, but not the en dash, introduces quoted text.

In informal contexts, a hyphen (-) is often used as a substitute for an en dash, as is a pair of hyphens (--) for a long dash, because the hyphens symbol is readily available on most keyboards. The autocorrection facility of word-processing software often corrects these to the typographically correct form of dash.

Figure dash

The figure dash ‒ (U+2012 ‒ FIGURE DASH) has the same width as a numerical digit (many computer fonts have digits of equal width). It is used within numbers, such as the phone number 555‒0199, especially in columns so as to maintain alignment. In contrast, the en dash – (U+2013 – EN DASH) is generally used for a range of values.

The minus sign − (U+2212 − MINUS SIGN) glyph is generally set a little higher, so as to be level with the horizontal bar of the plus sign. In informal usage, the hyphen-minus - (U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS), provided as standard on most keyboards, is often used instead of the figure dash.

In TeX, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be a substitution for the figure dash. In XeLaTeX, one can use \char"2012. The Linux Libertine font also has the figure dash glyph.

En dash

The en dash, en rule, or nut dash – is traditionally half the width of an em dash.

In modern fonts, the length of the en dash is not standardized, and the en dash is often more than half the width of the em dash. The widths of en and em dashes have also been specified as being equal to those of the uppercase letters N and M, respectively,

and at other times to the widths of the lower-case letters.

Usage

The three main uses of the en dash are:

to connect symmetric items, such as the two ends of a range or two competitors or alternatives

to contrast values or illustrate a relationship between two things

to compound attributes, where one of the connected items is itself a compound

The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range of values—a range with clearly defined and finite upper and lower boundaries—roughly signifying what might otherwise be communicated by the word "through" in American English, or "to" in International English. This may include ranges such as those between dates, times, or numbers. Various style guides restrict this range indication style to only parenthetical or tabular matter, requiring "to" or "through" in running text. Preference for hyphen vs. en dash in ranges varies. For example, the APA style (named after the American Psychological Association) uses an en dash in ranges, but the AMA style (named after the American Medical Association) uses a hyphen:

Some style guides (including the Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) and the AMA Manual of Style) recommend that, when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, the word "to" should be used instead of an en dash. For example, "a voltage of 50 V to 100 V" is preferable to using "a voltage of 50–100 V". Relatedly, in ranges that include negative numbers, "to" is used to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness (for example, "temperatures ranged from −18 °C to −34 °C"). It is also considered poor style (best avoided) to use the en dash in place of the words "to" or "and" in phrases that follow the forms from X to Y and between X and Y.

The en dash is used to contrast values or illustrate a relationship between two things. Examples of this usage include:

Australia beat American Samoa 31–0.

Radical–Unionist coalition

Typography

In most uses of en dashes, such as when used in indicating ranges, they are typeset closed up to the adjacent words or numbers. Examples include "the 1914–18 war" or "the Dover–Calais crossing". It is only when en dashes are used in setting off parenthetical expressions – such as this one – that they take spaces around them. For more on the choice of em versus en in this context, see En dash versus em dash.

When an en dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding environment—as in the ASCII character set—there are some conventional substitutions. Often two consecutive hyphens are the substitute.

The en dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2013 (decimal 8211) and represented in HTML by the named character entity –.

The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign, when the minus sign character is not available since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign and is often available when the minus sign is not; see below. For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh Character Set had an en dash, useful for the minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. However, the en dash cannot be used for a minus sign in programming languages because the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus.

Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the start of each item in a bulleted list.

Em dash

The em dash, em rule, or mutton dash — is longer than an en dash. The character is called an em dash because it is one em wide, a length that varies depending on the font size. One em is the same length as the font's height (which is typically measured in points). So in 9-point type, an em dash is nine points wide, while in 24-point type the em dash is 24 points wide. By comparison, the en dash, with its 1 en width, is in most fonts either a half-em wide

or the width of an upper-case "N".

The em dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2014 (decimal 8212) and represented in HTML by the named character entity —.

Usage

The em dash is used in several ways. It is primarily used in places where a set of parentheses or a colon might otherwise be used.

It can also show an abrupt change in thought (or an interruption in speech) or be used where a full stop (period) is too strong and a comma is too weak, similar to that of a semicolon. Em dashes are also used to set off summaries or definitions. Common uses and definitions are cited below with examples.

Three alkali metals are the usual substituents: sodium, potassium, and lithium.

Three alkali metals are the usual substituents—sodium, potassium, and lithium.

These are the colors of the flag: red, white, and blue.

Red, white, and blue—these are the colors of the flag.

Compare parentheses with em dashes:

Three alkali metals (sodium, potassium, and lithium) are the usual substituents.

Three alkali metals—sodium, potassium, and lithium—are the usual substituents.

Compare commas, em dashes and parentheses (respectively) when no internal commas intervene:

The food, which was delicious, reminded me of home.

The food—which was delicious—reminded me of home.

The food (which was delicious) reminded me of home.

It may indicate an interpolation stronger than that demarcated by parentheses, as in the following from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine.

Typographic details

According to most American sources (such as The Chicago Manual of Style) and some British sources (such as The Oxford Guide to Style), an em dash should always be set closed, meaning it should not be surrounded by spaces. But the practice in some parts of the English-speaking world, including the style recommended by The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage for printed newspapers and the AP Stylebook, sets it open, separating it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A) when it is being used parenthetically. The AP Stylebook rejects the use of the open em dash to set off introductory items in lists.

The "space, en dash, space" sequence is the predominant style in German and French typography. (See En dash versus em dash below.)

In Canada, The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing, The Oxford Canadian A to Z of Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation: Guide to Canadian English Usage (2nd ed.), Editing Canadian English, and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary all specify that an em dash should be set closed when used between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals.

The Australian government's Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers (6th ed.), also specifies that em dashes inserted between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals, should be set closed. A section on the 2-em rule (⸺) also explains that the 2-em can be used to mark an abrupt break in direct or reported speech, but a space is used before the 2-em if a complete word is missing, while no space is used if part of a word exists before the sudden break. Two examples of this are as follows:

I distinctly heard him say, "Go away or I'll ——".

It was alleged that D—— had been threatened with blackmail.

When an em dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding environment—as in the ASCII character set—it has usually been approximated as consecutive double (--) or triple (---) hyphens. The two-hyphen em dash proxy is perhaps more common, being a widespread convention in the typewriting era. (It is still described for hard copy manuscript preparation in The Chicago Manual of Style as of the 16th edition, although the manual conveys that typewritten manuscript and copyediting on paper are now dated practices.) The three-hyphen em dash proxy was popular with various publishers because the sequence of one, two, or three hyphens could then correspond to the hyphen, en dash, and em dash, respectively.

Usage in AI-generated text

In April 2025, Rolling Stone reported on the growing perception that the em dash is a hallmark of AI-generated writing, particularly by ChatGPT. The article noted how this idea spread through social media, where users began referring to it as the "ChatGPT hyphen" and how these users advised avoiding it to appear more human. However, several writers defended the em dash as a legitimate and expressive punctuation mark with a long history in human writing. New York Times Magazine editor Nitsuh Abebe has theorized that growing unfamiliarity with em dashes represents writing conceptually shifting from edited media toward casual emails and text messages. An OpenAI spokesperson stated that while ChatGPT may favor the em dash, its style depends on prompts and is not a reliable indicator of machine authorship.

En dash versus em dash

The en dash is wider than the hyphen but not as wide as the em dash. An em width is defined as the point size of the currently used font, since the M character is not always the width of the point size. In running text, various dash conventions are employed: an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — or a spaced en dash – like so – can be seen in contemporary publications.

Various style guides and national varieties of languages prescribe different guidance on dashes. Dashes have been cited as being treated differently in the US and the UK, with the former preferring the use of an em dash with no additional spacing and the latter preferring a spaced en dash. As examples of the US style, The Chicago Manual of Style and The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association recommend unspaced em dashes. Style guides outside the US are more variable. For example, The Elements of Typographic Style by Canadian typographer Robert Bringhurst recommends the spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash "belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography". In the United Kingdom, the spaced en dash is the house style for certain major publishers, including the Penguin Group, the Cambridge University Press, and Routledge. However, this convention is not universal. The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that the spaced en dash is used by "other British publishers" but states that the Oxford University Press, like "most US publishers", uses the unspaced em dash. Fowler's Modern English Usage, saying that it is summarising the New Hart's Rules, describes the principal uses of the em dash as "a single dash used to introduce an explanation or expansion" and "a pair of dashes used to indicate asides and parentheses", without stipulating whether it should be spaced but giving only unspaced examples.

The en dash – always with spaces in running text when, as discussed in this section, indicating a parenthesis or pause – and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. Most typesetting and word processing expects word spacing to vary to support full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words it falls between. This can cause uneven spacing in the text, but can be mitigated by the use of thin spaces, hair spaces, or even zero-width spaces on the sides of the em dash. This provides the appearance of an unspaced em dash, but allows the words and dashes to break between lines. The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words further exaggerated. En dashes may also be preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns, such as in newspapers and similar publications, since the en dash is smaller. In such cases, its use is based purely on space considerations and is not necessarily related to other typographical concerns.

Horizontal bar

The horizontal bar (U+2015 ― HORIZONTAL BAR), also known as a quotation dash, is used to introduce quoted text. This is the standard method of printing dialogue in some languages. The em dash is equally suitable if the quotation dash is unavailable or is contrary to the house style being used.

There is no support in the standard TeX fonts, but one can use \hbox{---}\kern-.5em--- or an em dash.

Swung dash

The swung dash (U+2053 ⁓ SWUNG DASH) resembles a lengthened tilde and is used to separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries, it is frequently used to stand in for the term being defined. A dictionary entry providing an example for the term henceforth might employ the swung dash as follows:

henceforth (adv.) from this time forth; from now on; "⁓ she will be known as Mrs. Smith"

Unicode

In the following tables, the "Em and 5×" column uses a capital M as a standard comparison to demonstrate the vertical position of different Unicode dash characters. "5×" means that there are five copies of this type of dash.

Unicode dash characters

This table lists characters with property Dash=yes in Unicode.

Related characters

This table lists characters similar to dashes, but with property Dash=no in Unicode.

In other languages

In many languages, such as Polish, the em dash is used as an opening quotation mark. There is no matching closing quotation mark; typically a new paragraph will be started, introduced by a dash, for each turn in the dialogue.

Corpus studies indicate that em dashes are more commonly used in Russian than in English. In Russian, the em dash is used for the present copula (meaning 'am/is/are'), which is unpronounced in spoken Russian.

In French and Italian, em or en dashes can be used as parentheses (brackets), but the use of a second dash as a closing parenthesis is optional. When a closing dash is not used, the sentence is ended with a period (full stop) as usual. Dashes are, however, much less common than parentheses.

In Spanish, em dashes can be used to mark off parenthetical phrases. Unlike in English, the em dashes are spaced like brackets, i.e., there is a space between main sentence and dash, but not between parenthetical phrase and dash. For example: "Llevaba la fidelidad a su maestro —un buen profesor— hasta extremos insospechados." (In English: 'He took his loyalty to his teacher – a good teacher – to unsuspected extremes.')