this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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Ok, what the heck is an em-dash?
There are two types of dashes. One is the "n-dash" (or "en-dash"), which takes up one space, and is most often used to hyphenate words; and the other is the "m-dash" (or "em-dash) which takes up two spaces, and is most often used to bracket off parenthetical information within a sentence, like kind of a lighter weight parentheses. Em-dashes get used a lot in novels and other published writing that is subject to correction from a professional copy editor, but very rarely in the daily typing of regular people. So now when people see it getting used they just assume it must be a clanker.
A slight correction, en-dashes are used mostly to indicate ranges like Mon–Fri. Hyphens are a separate third thing, smaller than an en-dash.
- hyphen
– en-dash
— em-dash
They get their names originally from having the same width as the letter n or m respectively in typesetting (though not all fonts follow that necessarily).
Thank you for this!!!!