![]() ![]() In this article, we will explore the different types of dashes that you can use in Excel and how to insert them into your spreadsheets. These dashes can be used to separate text, create lists, or simply add visual interest to your data. One of the many features that Excel offers is the ability to insert different types of dashes into your spreadsheets. June Casagrande is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at our coverage by becoming a digital subscriber.Excel is a powerful tool that can help you organize and analyze data in a variety of ways. On a PC, hold down control and press the minus sign on a number pad. To make an en dash on a Mac, hold down the option key then press the hyphen key. They’re also used in place of hyphens to connect numbers with words or prefixes, like pre–1800, and for ranges and sports scores, like “the Dolphins won 10–7.” But a hyphen can do all these jobs nicely if you’re not working in an en dash world. For example, they can connect two terms that already have hyphens in them, like in a semi-private–semi-public entity. Old-school newswires couldn’t transmit them properly and so en dashes never became part of news editing style.īook and magazine publishing will use an en dash, which is longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash, as a sort of uber hyphen. In most newswriting, they don’t exist at all. They connect words with other words, numbers, prefixes and suffixes to create terms like “forward-looking” or “pre-1950” or “full-time” or “e-reader.” You can use them to build your own multiword adjectives, as in a “true-crime obsession.” Some terms already contain hyphens in their proper spelling, which you can find in a dictionary, as in “good-looking” and “jack-of-all-trades.”Įn dashes, which work more like hyphens than like em dashes, are rare. Unlike em dashes, hyphens are not sentence punctuation. All these systems offer other ways to make em dashes, too. In many word processing programs, you can just type two hyphens then the space bar and auto correct will make an em dash for you. On a PC with a number pad, you can type the minus key while holding down the control and alt keys. To make an em dash on a Mac computer, you type the hyphen key while holding down the shift and option keys. Book and magazine publishing usually omit the spaces-their dashes touch the word on either side. News publications usually put a space on either side of an em dash - making it sort of float. A period or possibly a semicolon would be better. Personally, I consider it a mistake to use an em dash between complete clauses - this sentence is an example. You can even use em dashes for dialogue, datelines or taglines or to show that speech was cut off mid-sentence. They can also set off lists of items - names, places, things - mid-sentence or at the end. Or you can use em dashes to set off parenthetical thoughts - and who doesn’t love those? - in a sentence. Commas, parentheses and colons can usually get your point across in any spot where you might use a dash.īut if your sentence already has enough commas or if you want to create visual emphasis - like this - you can use em dashes to signal a change in sentence structure or thought. If you don’t want to use them, you don’t have to. Each of these three punctuation marks has its own special job.Įm dashes, often simply called dashes, are sentence punctuation - a way to connect ideas and phrases and clauses. But my point remains true: A hyphen is not an em dash. Then I googled it and learned that, apparently, I had made the term up. But it wasn’t until very recently someone asked me about the term “floating hyphen.” Is that a real thing? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been giving this note to my editing clients: “Replace floating hyphen with proper em dash.” It comes up when I’m proofreading images, like PDFs, and I see a hyphen with just a space on either side connecting two parts of a sentence – like this. ![]()
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