Not to be confused with the em dash, the en dash is a smaller dash so named because it’s about the length of a printed capital letter N. The old aphorism rings true here: less is more. If we do, our prose can become clunky and unsurprising. Like any tool, it’s best not to overuse em dashes in our writing. “And then I went to school but school was closed because it was a snow day, so I sledded all the way back home and made myself a hot chocolate, but then the power went out, so I-”.Where had the smoke come from?Īnd they can also be used in dialogue to signify an interruption: I smiled, breathed in the fresh air, and-coughed.The match touched the wick, the fuse ignited-bang! The explosion boomed through the night.The baby cried and cried and-she stopped.Therefore, they’re set apart with em dashes.Įm dashes can be used alone to indicate a moment of surprise in writing:

They add greater context to a detail mentioned in the sentence, though they aren’t integral parts of the sentence by themselves.

Jenna slurped down the rest of her coffee-no cream, no sugar-then tossed the empty cup into the trash.Īs you can see, the em dashes in these sentences perform a similar function to parentheses.

I couldn’t believe-or even comprehend-what I was seeing.

Albert ran-well, more like stumbled-across the finish line.

Use one before and one after the additional information: The em dash is excellent at setting off parenthetical thoughts. It’s called an em dash because it’s about the same width as a printed capital letter M. This is likely the most common dash seen in fiction writing. There are actually several kinds of dashes in the English language, so today we’ll cover them. Dashes are small punctuation marks that appear in writing and indicate pauses, breaks, parenthetical thoughts, and more.