Hyphens and dashes look similar but are not interchangeable. The hyphen, the smallest of these marks, has three uses in text. First, a hyphen occurs at the end of a line when a word breaks onto the next line. These hyphens are inserted automatically by your word processor.
Second, certain multipart words and names are properly spelled with hyphens (topsy-turvy, cost-effective, Murray Gell-Mann). However, a hyphen is typically not used after a prefix (nonfat, not non-fat).
Third, hyphens are used in phrasal adjectives, such as ten-dollar bill, estate-planning attorney, or clean-air regulations. This is to prevent ambiguities—in the unhyphenated phrase obscene speech restrictions, is obscene an opinion about the speech restrictions, or do the restrictions pertain to obscene speech? If the latter, then you’d write it as obscene-speech restrictions. Nonprofessional writers often omit the hyphens in phrasal adjectives. As a professional writer, you should not.
Dashes come in two sizes—the en dash and the em dash. The em dash (—) is typically about as wide as a capital M; the en dash (–) is about half that size. Dashes are often approximated by typing two or three hyphens in a row (---). Don’t do that. Since every typeface has these two dash characters, there’s no reason not to use them.
Mac OS en dash: OPTION + hyphen
Mac OS em dash: SHIFT + OPTION + hyphen
Windows en dash: ALT + 0150
Windows em dash: ALT + 0151
HTML en dash: –
HTML em dash: —
Dashes typically are set flush against the surrounding text, without spaces before and after. But if your em dashes look like they’re being crushed, you can add spaces.
The en dash has two uses. First, it can indicate a range of values, as in 1880–1912, 116 Cal. App. 4th 330–339, or Exhibits A–E. If you open with from, pair it with to instead of an en dash (from 1880 to 1912, not from 1880–1912). Be careful with citations like Local Rule 7-3. In that case, you want a hyphen and not an en dash, because it’s the multipart name of a single rule, not a range.
Second, the en dash can denote a connection or contrast between pairs of words, for instance conservative–liberal split, Arizona–Nevada reciprocity, or Sarbanes–Oxley Act.
The em dash is a versatile mark used to signal a break between sentence phrases. Use it when a comma is not quite enough, but a colon, semicolon or set of parentheses is a little too much. Em dashes put a nice pause in the text—they are underused in legal writing.
When the em-dash separates clauses, should spaces be put around it? I have seen it both ways.
The standard rule is that em-dashes should be set flush to text, but there are plenty of counterexamples (e.g. the New York Times puts spaces around them)
Are you saying that “free speech restrictions” should be “free-speech restrictions”? have you checked with the ACLU? And speaking of the First Amendment, what about “content based restrictions”? Hyphen or not?
And does my keyboard have have all 3 - hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes?
Yes, those should be written as free-speech restrictions and content-based restrictions. While some publications have come up with subtle rules about when the hyphen can be omitted in a phrasal adjective, the simplest (and never incorrect) rule is to always use it. Garner’s Modern American Usage even includes the example First Amendment’s free-exercise-of-religion clause.
The hyphen is on your keyboard; the dashes are not. You can either use the standard key combos listed above, or you can set up key shortcuts in your word processor. For instance, I’ve set up Word so that when I type three hyphens, it gets converted to an em-dash automatically.
I think this is a good place to mention the minus sign too. It’s distinct from both hyphen and dashes, and stands out much better than the hyphen next to numbers. Compare “3+1-2=2″ to “3+1−2=2″.
[...] Typography for Lawyers [...]
I would add that the em-dash is used for attributions after a direct quotation, e.g.:
“I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.” — Mitch Hedberg
I like to use Word’s shortcuts for dashes (which also work in Outlook for HTML e-mails):
en-dash: CTRL + hyphen (on the number pad)
em-dash: CTRL + ALT + hyphen (on the number pad)
Charles S
These comments are so relevant and appropriate. I just want to say kudos to Ed. I miss Mitch Hedberg.
“Since every typeface has these two dash characters, there’s no reason not to use them.” (But what’s the reason to use them, other than that they’re there and there’s no reason not to? I understand why not to double-space after a sentence-ending period, but I’m not sure what the typographic argument is for using the right way instead of the shorthand, other than that it is the “proper” and more labor-intensive way.)
How I wish this were the case! The em dash is ever so much more attractive than two consecutive en dashes, but there are, unfortunately (as an example) places where when you copy and paste an em dash from MS Word, it automatically converts it to a (single) hyphen, leaving you stuck going back and manually fixing it.
I don’t object to the standard, but you know you’re not going to lose work if you count out the hyphens yourself—and everybody knows what you mean, without me having to remember numbers.
The typographic argument for doing it the right way is that it’s the right way, and the other ways are wrong.
I’m here to present the rules. Whether you adopt them is up to you. You could just as easily ask “Why should I use the subjunctive tense? Everyone understands what I mean when I don’t use it.” Maybe so, but as a matter of grammar, it’s wrong.
Similarly, as a matter of typography, multiple hyphens are wrong.
“Dashes are often approximated by typing two or three hyphens in a row (—).”
Looks like Wordpress kindly converted that to an em-dash for you. Maybe wrap it in a code block?
Can an experienced eye distinguish between hyphens, en dashes, and minus signs?
Minus signs and en dashes are difficult to distinguish.
En dashes and hyphens are not difficult. The hyphen is smaller and sometimes angled slightly (SW to NE). The en dash is longer and rectangular.
Sorry for nitpicking, but are you really sure about that en-dash in “Sarbanes-Oxley Act”? I’d put a hyphen there, for two reasons:
(1) “Sarbanes-Oxley” isn’t there to denote a connection or conflict between the senators; it’s just the name of the act. Because the act is Sarbanes’s and Oxley’s baby, its name is a compound of its fathers’. Compound names are hyphenated, not en-dashed.
(2) The Government Printing Office hyphenates “Sarbanes-Oxley”, too. Check out their official copy of the act and refer to Section 1(a). It says that “This Act may be cited as the ‘Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002′”—with a hyphen. (The URL is http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ204/pdf/PLAW-107publ204.pdf)
Considering that the act suggests its own, grammatically reasonable usage—why not follow it?
According to Bryan Garner, the en dash is used “for joint authors” but not “for one person with a double-barreled name”, who gets a hyphen. (GMAU 2nd ed. at 657.) Thus, Sarbanes–Oxley Act should contain an en dash, but if the children of Sarbanes and Oxley married, they’d be known as Mr. and Mrs. Sarbanes-Oxley (hyphenated).
I agree that the rule seems contradictory at first. (I’ve certainly done it wrong in the past.) But it makes sense if you consider that the en dash is intended to preserve a distinction between the elements. I remember the rule by asking myself whether an “and” could logically appear between the words. If yes, then the en dash is usually the right choice. (Sarbanes and Oxley Act makes sense; Mr. and Mrs. Sarbanes and Oxley does not.)
In this case, since the GPO approves of Sarbanes–Oxley with a hyphen, then that form is acceptable. As I say elsewhere on the site, if a specific rule supersedes anything I say, follow the rule, not me.
But I’ll stop short of endorsing the GPO’s rule as the preferred practice. Governments goof up typography all the time. I was recently in Hawaii, where most street signs have a proper okina, but a significant minority print it upside down. Does that mean that you can make an okina either way? No. (Even the U.S. Postal Service got it wrong on a stamp honoring Hawaii.)
Just a suggestion: depending on editorial style or the country one’s writing in, you can separate sentence clauses with a spaced en dash, or a flush em dash (when I did graphic design in the US, spaced en dashes were the norm, but in NZ it’s flush em dashes). I would say “if your en dashes look like they’re being crushed”, add a space. But I wouldn’t usually space em dashes; maybe just a thin space, if people know what a thin space is.