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A dash is a punctuation mark. It is longer than a hyphen and is used differently. The term punctuation has two different linguistic meanings: in general, the act and the effect of punctuating, i. ... This article is about the punctuation mark. ...

Common dashes

There are several forms of dash, of which the most common are:

	glyph	Unicode[1]	HTML[2]	HTML/XML[3]
hyphen	‐	U+2010 (8208)	none	‐ or ‐
figure dash	‒	U+2012 (8210)	none	‒ or ‒
en dash	–	U+2013 (8211)	–	– or –
em dash	—	U+2014 (8212)	—	— or —
horizontal bar	―	U+2015 (8213)	none	― or ―
swung dash		U+2053 (8275)	none	⁓ or ⁓

variant glyphs representing the character a (allographs of a) in the Zapfino typeface. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... HTML, an initialism of Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language. ... For other uses, see Dash (disambiguation). ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... For other uses, see Dash (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Dash (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Dash (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Dash (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Dash (disambiguation). ...

Hyphen

Main article: Hyphen

The hyphen (‐) is used both to join words and to separate syllables. Strictly speaking, the hyphen is not a dash at all; thus, careful typesetting (including with modern computer applications, such as word processors and HTML) relies on the following proper dashes instead. This article is about the punctuation mark. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... A word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. ...

Figure dash

The figure dash (‒) is so named because it is the same width as a digit, at least in typefaces with digits of equal width. “Font” redirects here. ...

The figure dash is used when a dash must be used within numbers, for example with telephone numbers: 867‒5309. This does not indicate a range (en dash is used for that), or function as the minus sign (which has its own glyph). A telephone number is a sequence of decimal digits that uniquely indicates the network termination point. ... The plus (+) and minus (−) signs are used universally to represent the operations of addition and subtraction, and have been extended to many other meanings, more or less analogous. ...

The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode, the figure dash is U+2012 (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms ‒ or ‒ to type it unless the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity. In TeX, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be substituted in TeX. The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... TeX (IPA: as in Greek, often in English; written with a lowercase e in imitation of the logo) is a typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. ...

En dash

The en dash (–), also known as the en rule, is one en in width: half the width of an em dash. An en is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. ... An em is a unit of measurement in the field of typography, equal to the pt size of the current font. ...

Ranges of values

The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range (a range with clearly defined and non-infinite upper and lower boundaries) of values, such as those between dates, times, or numbers.^[4][5][6][7]

Some examples of this usage:

• June–July 1967
• 1:00–2:00 p.m.
• For ages 3–5
• pp. 38–55
• President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)

The Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) recommends that the word "to" be used instead of an en dash when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, such as a range of units. For example, "a voltage of 50 to 100 V" rather than "a voltage of 50–100 V". Look up si, Si, SI in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

It is also considered inappropriate to use the en dash in place of the words "to" and "and" in phrases that follow the forms "from … to …" and "between … and …".^[5][6]

Relationships and connections

The en dash can also be used to contrast values, or illustrate a relationship between two things.^[4][7]

Some examples of this usage:

• Notre Dame beat Miami 31–30.
• New York–London flight (though some sources say that New York to London flight is more appropriate because New York is a single name composed of two valid words; with a dash the phrase is ambiguous and could mean either Flight from New York to London or New flight from York to London^[7])
• Mother–daughter relationship
• The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.
• The McCain–Feingold bill
• A C–C single bond

A "simple" compound used as an adjective is written with a hyphen; at least one authority considers name pairs, as in the Taft-Hartley Act to be "simple",^[5] while most consider an en dash appropriate there to represent the parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill or Bose–Einstein statistics. York shown within England Coordinates: , Sovereign state Constituent country Region Yorkshire and the Humber Ceremonial county North Yorkshire Admin HQ York City Centre Founded 71 City Status 71 Government  - Type Unitary Authority, City  - Governing body City of York Council  - Leadership: Leader & Executive  - Executive: Liberal Democrat  - MPs: Hugh Bayley (L) John... The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA; also known as the McCain-Feingold Act) is United States federal law that regulates the financing of political campaigns. ... For other uses, see Carbon (disambiguation). ... Covalently bonded hydrogen and carbon in a molecule of methane. ... The Labor-Management Relations Act, commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, is a United States federal law that greatly restricts the activities and power of labor unions. ... The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA; also known as the McCain-Feingold Act) is United States federal law that regulates the financing of political campaigns. ... For other topics related to Einstein see Einstein (disambiguation). ...

Note that The Chicago Manual of Style limits the use of the en dash to two main purposes: to indicate ranges of time, money, or other amounts (or in certain other cases where it replaces the word to); and in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound or when one of the elements is already hyphenated.^[8] That is, the Chicago Manual of Style rules specify en dash in these: The Chicago Manual of Style (abbreviated CMS or CMOS, and spoken as Chicago) is a style guide for American English published by the University of Chicago Press (hence its title), prescribing a writing style widely used in publishing. ...

• Notre Dame beat Miami 31–30.
• New York–London flight
• The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.

but hyphens in these:

• Mother-daughter relationship
• The McCain-Feingold bill
• A C-C single bond
• Taft-Hartley Act
• Bose-Einstein statistics

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) is U.S. Congressional legislation which regulates the financing of political campaigns. ... For other uses, see Carbon (disambiguation). ... Covalently bonded hydrogen and carbon in a molecule of methane. ... The Labor-Management Relations Act, commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, is a United States federal law that greatly restricts the activities and power of labor unions. ... In statistical mechanics, Bose-Einstein statistics determines the statistical distribution of identical indistinguishable bosons over the energy states in thermal equilibrium. ...

Compound adjectives

The en dash can be used instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives in which one part consists of two words or a hyphenated word:^[5][6] This article is about the punctuation mark. ...

• The non–San Francisco part of the world
• The post–MS-DOS era
• High-priority–high-pressure tasks (tasks which are both high-priority and high-pressure).

This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ...

Usage guidelines

The en dash is used instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives for which neither part of the adjective modifies the other. That is, when each is modifying the noun. This is common in science, when names compose an adjective as in Bose–Einstein condensate. Compare this with "award-winning novel" in which "award" modifies "winning" and together they modify "novel". Contrast "Franco-Prussian War", "Anglo-Saxon", etc., in which the first element does not strictly modify the second, but a hyphen is still normally used. The Chicago Manual of Style does not recognize this usage and prescribes a hyphen in Bose-Einstein condensate.^[8] A Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter formed by a system of bosons confined in an external potential and cooled to temperatures very near to absolute zero (0 kelvin or −273. ... The Chicago Manual of Style (abbreviated CMS or CMOS, and spoken as Chicago) is a style guide for American English published by the University of Chicago Press (hence its title), prescribing a writing style widely used in publishing. ...

En dashes that are used instead of hyphens to connect words normally do not have spaces around them. An exception is when excluding them may cause confusion or odd look (e.g., 12 June – 3 July; contrast 12 June–3 July). However, when an actual en dash is unavailable, one may use a hyphen-minus with a single space on each side (" - ").

Parenthetic and other uses at the sentence level

Like em dashes, en dashes can be used instead of colons, or pairs of commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. They can also be used around parenthetical expressions – such as this one – in place of the em dashes preferred by some publishers, particularly where short columns are used, since em dashes can look awkward at the end of a line. See En dash versus em dash, below. In these situations, en dashes must have a single space on each side.

Electronic usage

In Unicode, the en dash is U+2013 (decimal 8211). In HTML, one may use the numeric forms – or –; there is also an HTML entity –. In TeX, the en dash may normally (depending on the font) be input as a double hyphen-minus (--). TeX (IPA: as in Greek, often in English; written with a lowercase e in imitation of the logo) is a typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. ...

The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign, when the minus sign character is not available, since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign. For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh character set had an en dash, useful for minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. The en dash cannot be used in programming languages for a minus, however, since the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus; since programming languages are usually set in a fixed-pitch (monospaced) font face, the hyphen-minus looks acceptable there. The plus (+) and minus (−) signs are used universally to represent the operations of addition and subtraction, and have been extended to many other meanings, more or less analogous. ... Other listings of programming languages are: Categorical list of programming languages Generational list of programming languages Chronological list of programming languages Note: Esoteric programming languages have been moved to the separate List of esoteric programming languages. ...

Em dash

The em dash (—), also known as the em rule, indicates a sudden break in thought—a parenthetical statement like this one—or an open range (such as "John Doe, 1987—"). Its name derives from its defined width of one em, which is the length, expressed in points, by which font sizes are typically specified. Thus in 9-point type, an em is 9 points wide, while the em of 24-point type is 24 points wide, and so on. (By comparison, the en dash, with its 1-en width, is 1/2 em wide in any font.) An em is a unit of measurement in the field of typography, equal to the pt size of the current font. ... A dash is a punctuation mark, and is not to be confused with the hyphen, which has quite different uses. ... An en is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. ... “Font” redirects here. ...

The em dash is used in much the way a colon or set of parentheses is used: it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop (or "period") is too strong and a comma too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used in lists or definitions, but that is a style guide issue; a colon should be used instead. This article is about colons in punctuation. ... For technical reasons, :) and some similar combinations starting with : redirect here. ... A full stop or period (sometimes stop, full point or dot), is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and many other languages. ... For other uses, see Comma. ...

According to most American sources (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style) and to some British sources (e.g., The Oxford Guide to Style), an em dash should always be set closed (not surrounded by spaces). But the practice in many parts of the English-speaking world^{[citation needed]} sets it open (separates it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A)) when it is being used parenthetically. Some writers, finding the em dash unappealingly long, prefer to use an open-set en dash. This "space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in German and French typography. See En dash versus em dash below. The Chicago Manual of Style (abbreviated CMS or CMOS, and spoken as Chicago) is a style guide for American English published by the University of Chicago Press (hence its title), prescribing a writing style widely used in publishing. ... Harts Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford is a reference book and style guide first published in 1893. ... A space is a punctuation convention for providing interword separation in some scripts, including the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic. ... A specimen of roman typefaces by William Caslon Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. ...

Monospaced fonts (such as Courier) that mimic the look of a typewriter have the same width for all characters. Some of these fonts have em and en dashes which more or less fill the monospaced width they have available. For example, "- – — −" will show as a hyphen, en dash, em dash, and minus in one's current monospace font. Traditionally, typewriters had only a single hyphen glyph, so it is common to use two monospace hyphens strung together--like this--to serve as an em dash.

When an actual em dash is unavailable—as in the ASCII character set—a double ("--") or triple hyphen-minus ("---") is used. In Unicode, the em dash is U+2014 (decimal 8212). In HTML, one may use the numeric forms — or —; there is also the HTML entity —. In TeX, the em dash may normally be input as a triple hyphen-minus (---).

En dash versus em dash

The en dash is half the width of the em dash. The width of the en dash was originally the width of the typeset lowercase letter 'n', while the width of the em dash was the width of an uppercase 'M'; hence the names. A more correct definition of the em width is the point size of the currently used font, since the M character does not occupy an exact square in many fonts.^[9] Look up N, n in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see M (disambiguation). ... An em is a unit of measurement in the field of typography, equal to the pt size of the current font. ...

Traditionally an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — has been used for a dash in running text. The Elements of Typographic Style recommends the more concise spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash "belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography". The spaced en dash is also the house style for certain major publishers (Penguin, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge among them). However, some longstanding typographical guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style still recommend unspaced em dashes for this purpose. The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that this style is used by "other British publishers", but observes that Oxford University Press (OUP) does not use it. In practice, there is little consensus, and it is a matter of personal or house taste; the important thing is that usage should be consistent. Robert Bringhurst authored three editions of a book entitled The Elements of Typographic Style. ... Penguin Group is the second largest trade book publisher in the world. ... The headquarters of the Cambridge University Press, in Trumpington Street, Cambridge. ... Routledge is an imprint for books in the humanities part of the Taylor & Francis Group, which also has Brunner-Routledge, RoutledgeCurzon and RoutledgeFalmer divisions. ... The Chicago Manual of Style (abbreviated CMS or CMOS, and spoken as Chicago) is a style guide for American English published by the University of Chicago Press (hence its title), prescribing a writing style widely used in publishing. ... Harts Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford is a reference book and style guide first published in 1893. ...

The en dash (always with spaces, in running text) and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. In most typesetting and most word processing, the spacing between words is expected to be variable, so there can be full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words between which it falls. The effect can be uneven spacing in the text. In typesetting, justification is the setting of text or images within a column or measure to align along both the left and right margin. ...

En dashes are often preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns (as in newspapers and similar publications).^{[citation needed]}

The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words: it is already long, and the spaces increase the separation. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words is further exaggerated.

Horizontal bar

The horizontal bar or quotation dash (―) is used to introduce quoted text. This is the standard method of printing dialogue in some languages (see the quotation dash section of the Quotation mark article for further details of how it is used). For other uses, see Dialogue (disambiguation). ... Quotation marks, also called quotes, speech marks or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase. ... Quotation marks or inverted commas (also called quotes and speech marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase or a word. ...

If the quotation dash is unavailable, then the em dash can be used instead. In Unicode, the quotation dash is U+2015 (decimal 8213). In HTML, it can be input only with the numeric form, ― or ―; there is no equivalent character entity. But since browser support for it is nearly non-existent and Unicode itself equates use, for web pages one generally uses the em dash. There is no support in the standard TeX fonts, but one can use hbox{---}kern-.5em--- instead (or just use an em dash). An example of a Web browser (Mozilla Firefox) A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. ...

Swung dash

The swung dash ( or ~;) resembles a lengthened tilde, and is used to separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries, it is frequently used to stand in for the defined term in example text. For the baseball player known as the Big Tilde, see Magglio Ordóñez. ... For other uses, see Dictionary (disambiguation). ...

Example:

• henceforth (adverb), from this time forth; from now on; " she will be known as Mrs. Smith".

In Japanese the swung dash is often used to indicate an extension of a vowel in slang.

In Korean the swung dash is often used in place of an en dash.

The swung dash in Unicode is U+2053 (decimal 8275). In HTML, it can be input only with the numeric form, ⁓ or ⁓; there is no equivalent HTML entity.

In LaTeX2ε, one can use the math mode command $sim$. This article is about the typesetting system. ...

Summary

To summarize the above:

• To write a number with a dash in it, use the figure dash (‒).
• For a closed range, use an en dash (–).
• For an open range, use an em dash (—). Note: Chicago Manual of Style prescribes en dash (–).
• To make a compound adjective in which neither element modifies the other, use an en dash (–). Note: Chicago Manual of Style prescribes hyphen (-).
• For prefixing to a compound adjective that already has a hyphen (or a space) between elements, use an en dash (–).
• For parenthetical statements, use an em dash (—) with no surrounding space, or an en dash with surrounding space. Note: Chicago Manual of Style prescribes an em dash (—), not an en dash (–).
• To introduce a quotation, use a quotation dash (―).
• To separate alternatives, use a swung dash ().
• To replace a defined term in an example of usage within a definition, use a swung dash ().

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is a highly regarded style guide for American English, dealing with questions of style, manuscript preparation, and, to a lesser degree, usage. ... The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is a highly regarded style guide for American English, dealing with questions of style, manuscript preparation, and, to a lesser degree, usage. ... The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is a highly regarded style guide for American English, dealing with questions of style, manuscript preparation, and, to a lesser degree, usage. ...

Other dash-like characters

The are several characters which resemble dashes but have different meanings and uses. These include:

• The hyphen-minus (-), Unicode U+002D, is the standard ASCII hyphen. It looks like a dash, but should only be used as such when proper dashes are unavailable. Sometimes this is used in groups to indicate different types of dash.
• The tilde (~), U+007E, is a diacritic mark.
• The underscore (_), U+005F, is either a diacritic mark, or a character replacing a standard space.
• The macron (¯), U+00AF, is another diacritic mark.
• The soft hyphen (U+00AD) is used to indicate where a line may break, as in a compound word or between syllables.
• The hyphen (‐), U+2010, is a character which, unlike the ASCII hyphen, always represents a hyphen.^{[citation needed]}
• The hyphen bullet (⁃), U+2043, is a short horizontal line used as a list bullet.
• The minus sign (−), U+2212, −, is an arithmetic operator used in mathematics to represent subtraction or negative numbers.
• The wave dash (〜), U+301C, and the wavy dash (〰), U+3030, are wavy lines found in some East Asian character sets. Typographically, they have the width of one CJK character cell (fullwidth form), and follow the direction of the text (horizontal for horizontal text, vertical for columnar). They are used as dashes, and occasionally as emphatic variants of the katakana vowel extender mark.
• The Armenian hyphen (֊), U+058A, is a hyphen from the Armenian alphabet.
• The Hebrew Maqaf (־), U+05BE, is a hyphen-like character from the Hebrew alphabet.
• The Mongolian todo hyphen (᠆), U+1806, is a hyphen from the Mongolian alphabet.
• The Hangul Jungseong Eu (ㅡ U+3161 or ᅳ U+1173) is used in Korean to indicate the sound [ɨ].
• The Japanese chōon (ー), U+30FC, is used in Japanese to indicate a long vowel.
• The yī/ichi (一), U+4E00, means "one" in Chinese and Japanese.

The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Image:ASCII fullsvg There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... For the baseball player known as the Big Tilde, see Magglio Ordóñez. ... Example of a letter with a diacritic A diacritic or diacritical mark, also called an accent, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... The underscore _ is the character with ASCII value 95. ... A macron, from Greek (makros) meaning large, is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. ... This article is about the punctuation mark. ... This article is about the punctuation mark. ... In typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list, like below, also known as the point of a bullet: This is the text of a list item. ... The plus (+) and minus (−) signs are used universally to represent the operations of addition and subtraction, and have been extended to many other meanings, more or less analogous. ... Arithmetic tables for children, Lausanne, 1835 Arithmetic or arithmetics (from the Greek word αριθμός = number) is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. ... In mathematics, an operator is a function that performs some sort of operation on a number, variable, or function. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... 5 - 2 = 3 (verbally, five minus two equals three) An example problem Subtraction is one of the four basic arithmetic operations; it is the inverse of addition. ... A negative number is a number that is less than zero, such as −3. ... A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ... CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which comprise the main East Asian languages. ... In CJK computing, graphic characters are traditionally classed into fullwidth (in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 全形; elsewhere: 全角) and halfwidth (in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 半形; elsewhere: 半角) characters. ... Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ... The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the 5th century. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Mongolian language historically has four writing systems that have been used over the centuries. ... Jamo redirects here. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category The chōon ) or bōsen ) mark is a Japanese symbol which is used to indicate a long vowel, especially in katakana writing. ...

Rendering dashes on computers

Typewriters and computers have traditionally had only a limited character set, often having no key with which to produce a dash. In consequence, it became common to substitute the nearest incorrect punctuation mark or symbol. Em dashes are often represented by a pair of spaces surrounding a single hyphen-minus (typical British usage) or by a pair of spaces surrounding two hyphen-minuses (mostly in the United States).

Modern computer software typically has support for many more characters, and is usually capable of rendering both the en and em dashes correctly—albeit sometimes with a little inconvenience for the user who has to input them. Some software, though, may operate in a more limited mode. Some text editors, for example, are restricted to working with a single 8-bit character encoding, and when unencodable characters are entered (e.g., by pasting from the clipboard), they are often blindly converted to question marks. Sometimes this happens to em and en dashes, even when the 8-bit encoding supports them, or when an alternative representation using hyphen-minuses would seem to be an option. A character encoding or character set (sometimes referred to as code page) consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the storage of text in computers...

Any kind of dash can manifest directly in an HTML document, but HTML also allows them to be entered as character entity references. The entity names for the em dash and the en dash are mdash and ndash; therefore, they can be referenced in HTML as — and –. The equivalent numeric character references are — and –. Nearly all web browsers and operating systems used today are capable of rendering the numeric form, and almost as many correctly display the named form. HTML, an initialism of Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ... HTML has been in use since 1991 (note that the W3C international standard is now XHTML), but the first standardized version with a reasonably complete treatment of international characters was version 4. ... A numeric character reference (NCR) is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-based markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set (UCS) of Unicode. ... An example of a Web browser (Mozilla Firefox) A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. ... An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. ...

• In Unicode, the figure dash, en dash, em dash, quotation dash, and swung dash correspond to characters U+2012, U+2013, U+2014, U+2015, and U+2053, respectively.

• In Mac OS using the Australian, British, Canadian, German, Irish, Irish Extended, U.S., or U.S. Extended keyboard layout, an en dash can be obtained by typing option-hyphen, while an em dash can be typed with option-shift-hyphen.

• In TeX, an em dash is typed as three hyphens ("---"), an en dash as two hyphens ("--"), and a hyphen-minus as one hyphen ("-"). Mathematical minus is signified as "$-$".

• Under recent versions of X11, you can obtain the em dash (—) by pressing the Compose key followed by - - - (triple hyphen-minus), and the en dash (–) can be obtained by pressing the Compose key followed by - - . (hyphen-minus, hyphen-minus, dot). In the absence of a compose key, it can be emulated by remapping some other seldom used key.[1]

• In Windows XP an en or em dash may be typed into most text areas by holding down the Alt key and pressing 0150 or 0151 respectively. The numbers must be typed on the numeric keypad with num lock turned on.

• With Microsoft Word's default settings (both Windows and Macintosh versions), an em dash symbol (not always a true em dash from the font) is automatically produced by Autocorrect when two unspaced hyphens are entered between words ("word--word"). An en dash (again, not always a true en dash from the font) is automatically produced when one or two hyphens surrounded by spaces are entered: ("word - word") or ("word -- word"). This feature can be disabled by customising Autocorrect. Other dashes, spaces, and special characters are possible, found through Tools → Customize… → Keyboard… → Common Symbols. Unassigned symbols (such as the true minus sign) can be assigned keyboard shortcuts through Insert → Symbol… → (select desired symbol) → Shortcut key… . To determine if the true en or em dash from the font are being used rather than a crossreferenced character from the Symbol font, copy and paste samples of the dashes into a text editor such as Windows Notepad. Using the true dash is important if one ever needs to share documents with other users in other applications or operating systems.
  In Word for Windows, an em dash can be typed with ctrl+alt+numeric hyphen (on the numeric keypad, usually in the top right corner), and an en dash can be typed with ctrl+numeric hyphen. This will not work with the hyphen key on the main keyboard (usually between "0" and "="), which has completely different functions associated with it.

In professionally printed documents, the typographer sometimes adds hair space, or, rarely, a full inter-word space, on either side of an em dash. In HTML it is possible to generate a hair space using the numeric character reference  , but current-generation web browsers are not uniformly supportive of this character, and may render it incorrectly. The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... This article relates to both the original Classic Mac OS as well as Mac OS X, Apples more recent operating system. ... TeX (IPA: as in Greek, often in English; written with a lowercase e in imitation of the logo) is a typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. ... In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays. ... The compose key and compose LED on a Sun Type 5, 6 and 7 keyboards is the second-last key on the bottom row The compose key on a DEC LK201 keyboard is the leftmost key on the bottom row On some computer systems, a compose key is a key... The compose key and compose LED on a Sun Type 5, 6 and 7 keyboards is the second-last key on the bottom row The compose key on a DEC LK201 keyboard is the leftmost key on the bottom row On some computer systems, a compose key is a key... Windows XP is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on general-purpose computer systems, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. ... The Alt key on a modern Windows keyboard The Alt key on an IBM PC keyboard is the key located immediately to either side of the Space bar, used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys. ... Num Lock is a key on the numeric keypad of most keyboards, used to switch that pad between number entry and arrow keys. ... Microsoft Word is Microsofts flagship word processing software. ...

References

In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. ... HTML has been in use since 1991 (note that the W3C international standard is now XHTML), but the first standardized version with a reasonably complete treatment of international characters was version 4. ... A numeric character reference (NCR) is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-based markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set (UCS) of Unicode. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 291st day of the year (292nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Chicago Style Q&A — Hyphens, En Dashes, Em Dashes
• Peter K. Sheerin, The trouble with EM 'n EN
• Dashes and Hyphens
• Colons, Semicolons, and Em-dashes
• Commonly confused characters
• MediaWiki User's Guide to creating special characters

v • d • e Typography terminology
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Style	Serif · Italic · Slab serif · Sans-serif · Blackletter · Script · Dingbat
Punctuation	Hanging punctuation · Hyphenation · Curly quotes · En dash · Em dash
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Digital typography	Font formats · Typesetting software · Character encoding · Rasterization · Hinting