What do dashes do in writing

A hyphen can also be used to avoid duplicated vowels and tripled consonants anti-oppression, pre-empt, hill-like. Use a hyphen, not a slash, to illustrate joint entity or ownership faculty-staff newsletter. Do not use a hyphen in place of "to" or "through," except in dates. President Dunn introduced the plan—the first of its kind—at a public forum. He defined core values—inclusiveness, sustainability, responsibility and respect.

Hyphen Usage Examples There are a number of situations where it is appropriate to use a hyphen. How to Type a Hyphen Modern computer keyboards have a hyphen key. The Em Dash — The em dash is the largest of the three kinds of dashes.

Em Dash Examples There are numerous examples of when it would be appropriate to use an em dash in writing. As she walked across the stage to receive her degree — the first in her family to graduate from college — she felt an immeasurable sense of accomplishment.

After laboring in the hot afternoon sun, Bob was incredibly tired — exhausted, really — but knew he could not pause to rest. Using em dashes is a great way — one of the very best — to provide readers with unique insights into the psyche of a character. Microsoft Word does this if you type two dashes in between two words, without typing a space between either word.

Google Docs does not do this. This works in Microsoft Word but not Google Docs. We covered many of the fundamentals in our writing class: grammar, punctuation, style, and voice. To join sentences. You can use a colon to connect two sentences when the second sentence summarizes, sharpens, or explains the first.

Both sentences should be complete, and their content should be very closely related. Note that if you use colons this way too often, it can break up the flow of your writing. To express time, in titles, and as part of other writing conventions. Colons appear in several standard or conventional places in writing. Here are a few examples:. Example: Kurlansky, M. Salt: A world history. Example incorrect :The very best peaches are: those that are grown in the great state of Georgia.

Example incorrect : My favorite cake is made of: carrots, flour, butter, eggs, and cream cheese icing. This violates the rule that the material preceding the colon must be a complete thought.

Look, for example, at the following sentence:. Example incorrect : There are many different types of paper, including: college ruled, wide ruled, and plain copy paper. The colon should simply be removed. Ask yourself a question: does the material preceding the colon stand on its own?

One way to tell if the colon has been properly used is to look only at the words that come in front of the colon. Do they make a complete thought? If not, you may be using the colon improperly. We seldom see the dash used this way in formal, academic prose. If you are using an old-fashioned typewriter that cannot create an en dash, you can denote to your typesetter or editor that a hyphen is to be converted to an en dash by using a hyphen and hand-writing the letter "n" above it.