It took me a while into my editing journey to get a grasp on these!
👉🏽The longest one (—) is 'em dash'
👉🏽The shortest one (‐) is 'hyphen'
👉🏽The one that is shorter than 'em dash' but longer than 'hyphen' is 'en dash'
💫Fun facts💫
✨Em dash is named so because its width is one 'em', which is equal to the height of the font size being used
✨En dash is named so because its width is equal to the width of upper-case 'N' or is half 'em' wide
Are they any different from each other❓
Well, yes...very different!
💡'Em dash' (—) is used to represent a thought that is off-set or at a tangent in the sentence
💡'En dash' (–) is used to show ranges
💡'Hyphen' (‐) is used to join and establish relations between words or parts of words
But...
The QWERTY keyboard does not have 'em dash' and 'en dash'🤯
So, what do you do❓
💫Some tips💫
💡Windows
em dash: Alt+0151
en dash: Alt+0150
💡macOS
em dash: Opt+Shift+-
en dash: Opt+-
💡Microsoft Word
em dash: Ctrl+Alt+-
en dash: Ctrl+-
💡Microsoft Word autocorrect feature can also come handy!
em dash: -- (two hyphens from number pad without space)
en dash: space-space (space before and after hyphen)
Pro tip (psst🤫 this is what I do!)
Save 'em dash' and 'en dash' from google in notepad and copy paste as and when required😉
Comentarios