Monday, February 12, 2007

Em-dash

Just to make certain for the upcoming test:

An em-dash is simply an elongated hyphen with no spaces between it and the surrounding words? How exactly are they used?

3 comments:

DavisH said...

Em-dashes, in my experience, are used in certain situations or circumstances. When I use an em-dash, whether it is correct or not, I imagine that I'm saying something on the side or in parenthesis. But em-dashes are for sentences that won't allow for parenthesis, such as dialog or a formal statement of some kind. I could be very wrong about this, but it is what I've seen in publications and in every day use.

Pat said...

Davis's comment is good.

Dashes are first explained in your textbook on pages 24 and 25. More detailed explanations, examples, and an exercise appear in chapter 10. You can also, of course, get more information by visiting the sites listed at the blog.

Pat said...

The fifteenth edition of Chicago Manual discusses em-dashes in sections 6.87 through 6.92.