How To Use Dashes In Fiction
Ready for more than you ever wanted to know about the types of dashes and how publishers typically use them on both sides of the atlantic.
How to use dashes in fiction. The em dash is particularly useful in dialogue there is a distressing tendency for some writers to overuse the em dash and i often notice this kind of overuse in amateurish fiction where there are also other problems. In the traditional standard manuscript format em dashes are written as. Generally hyphens are used to link words to make other words or phrases. En dashes are generally used to indicate ranges or to act as a substitute in word pairings for to and and. And of course conventional usage depends on your location united states versus united kingdom and whether your.
Cms uses no spaces around em dashes. Em dash ctrl alt minus far top right on the number pad. Interjecting thoughts both non fiction and fiction writers will use em dashes in this case. In fiction the em dash almost always appears with no spaces around it. This is in part because smf uses a courier font where every character is the same width so technically a hyphen is going to look the same as an em dash so you need to use two hyphens to indicate an em dash.
The dash works somewhat like parentheses or commas but it is used where a stronger punctuation is needed. How to create em dashes and en dashes. Dashes that set off text and replace alternative punctuation the en dash and the em dash can be used to set off an augmenting or explanatory word or phrase in a sentence that could stand alone without the insertion. Now for a quick recap on the types of dashes as used in fiction. Overuse of the em dash or parentheses or the semicolon or any punctuation marks can make your prose a little.
En dash ctrl minus far top right on the number pad. Ap puts spaces on each side of em dashes. Em dashes may set off a parenthetical element or interject an idea not in the sense of a grammatical interjection however in a sentence. Use an em dash to join independent clauses.