Spell Hyphen (-), En Dash (–), vs. Em Dash (—)
During the process of transcribing some English texts, I find ‘dash’ is actually often used when someone wants to make an explanation within a sentence. However, I rarely use ‘dash’; leaving aside the grammar, there is one point always confusing me. That is, the dash length seem different at different cases, and I don’t know how to type them correctly. Specifically, in English typing mode, when I type [hyphen/minus] key1 on the keyboard, I have ‘-’, which looks kind of short; while in Chinese typing mode, if I type [Shift] + [hyphen/minus], I have ‘——’, and after deleting one of them I’ll get ‘—’. It indeed looks like those dashes I ever saw to connect two parts of a sentence, but this method of typing an ‘English’ dash sounds ugly.
So, how to type a long dash in a standard way? To figure out this point, I looked up some references, and found that those dashes looks like the same but with different lengths can be categorized into three categories, i.e. hyphen, en dash, and em dash; they also have different functions from the perspective of English grammar. As in reference2:
There are two types of dash. The en dash is approximately the length of the letter N, and the em dash the length of the letter M.
- The shorter en dash (–) is used to mark ranges and with the meaning “to” in phrases like “Dover–Calais crossing.”
- The longer em dash (—) is used to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence.
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.
Make sure not to confuse dashes with shorter hyphens (-), which are used to combine words (as in well-behaved or long-running). A hyphen should not be used in place of a dash.
In short, ‘hyphen (-)’ is used to combine words, ‘en dash (–)’ to mark ranges and with the meaning “to” in phrases, ‘em dash (—)’ to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence.
However, there seems not a direct way to type an ‘en dash’ or ‘em dash’ by a single key on the keyboard. Besides, different softwares (or platforms) have different ways to render input symbols3. Take my case. As will be showed in the following table, if I type [hyphen/minus] $n$ times in a row, they are themselves, i.e. $n$ symbols of -, while as in HTML web pages, they will be translated into ‘en dash’ or ‘em dash’.
After searching for some references, I tried some methods:
| Mode | Method | Characters in markdown file | Characters in HTML |
|---|---|---|---|
| English typing mode | [hyphen/minus] $\times$ 1 |
- |
- (Hyphen/minus) |
| English typing mode | [hyphen/minus] $\times$ 2 |
-- |
– (En dash) |
| English typing mode | [hyphen/minus] $\times$3 |
--- |
— (Em dash) |
| English typing mode | [hyphen/minus] $\times$ 4 |
---- |
—- (Em dash + Hyphen/minus) |
| English typing mode | [hyphen/minus] $\times$ 5 |
----- |
—– (Em dash + En dash) |
| English typing mode | [hyphen/minus] $\times$6 |
------ |
—— (Em dash $\times$ 2) |
| Chinese typing mode | [Shift] + [hyphen/minus] |
—— |
—— (Em dash $\times$ 2) |
| Chinese typing mode | [Shift] + [hyphen/minus] and then delete one of them |
— |
— (Em dash) |
| Numeric keyboard | EN DASH ALT CODES ALT+015045 |
– (En dash) | – (En dash) |
| Numeric keyboard | EM DASH ALT CODES ALT+015145 |
— (Em dash) | — (Em dash) |
| HTML code | –3 |
– (En dash) | – (En dash) |
| HTML code | —3 |
— (Em dash) | — (Em dash) |
From this table, we can conclude that:
- To type a ‘hyphen (-)’ (or say, minus symbol), just type
[hyphen/minus]one time. - To type ‘en dash (–)’ in HTML web pages, there are two ways:
[hyphen/minus]$\times$ 2–
- and as for ‘em dash (—)’, more of the same:
[hyphen/minus]$\times$3—