Hyphens, Em Dashes, and En Dashes

Cat:Lang | Cat:Grammar

Posted: 8th of October, 2024

I don't know about you, but I'm very picky about grammar. I have a huge document detailing things relating to my planned projects, and in order to keep them concise, I must write so my sentences are clear. Something I've always used are hypens, but not in the traditional sense. While I just wrote that grammar is important to me, I do make some adjustments so the documents get their ideas across faster. For example:

"Step 1 - stop procrastinating."

This works for me, but I always had something buried in my brain that resurfaced recently, and it's the fact that hyphens have an actual use in writing, and they're not always called hyphens.

Hyphen's definition is as follows: "the sign -, used to join words to indicate that they have a combined meaning or that they are linked in the grammar of a sentence (as in pick-me-up, rock-forming ), to indicate the division of a word at the end of a line, or to indicate a missing or implied element (as in short- and long-term )."

I kindly borrowed this definition from the English Oxford Dictionary, and it shows that the word hyphen shows that I am using that specific symbol for that specific purpose, but there is another symbol, an em dash, and I suppose also an en dash. Marriam Webster writes, "Like a colon, an em dash introduces a clause that explains or expands upon something that precedes it.", so that is pretty interesting.

But what's an En Dash? Seriously, before writing this rant, I didn't know these existed! They are, apparently, "... used to represent a range or a tally." I borrowed this definition from Thesaurus.com. Anyway, how I use hyphens fall into none of those categories, as I mainly use it for its own purpose which I came up with by myself. If I wrote the same sentence "normally", it'd go as follows:

"Step 1: stop procrastinating."

This is similar to an en dash, but it's destinct enough that I feel like I can't call it one. Anyway, no matter how grammar-centric I may be, I will not stop using hyphens like this any time soon.