How To Use Dashes In Legal Writing

The em dash puts a nice pause in the text and it is un der used in pro fes sional writing.

How to use dashes in legal writing. Note that if you use colons this way too often it can break up the flow of your writing. Use parentheses to set off matter that you want to minimize or that is helpful but not essential. His neighbor with whom he had had several serious disagreements removed a section of the fence. The en dash is shorter than an em dash and longer than a hyphen. Dashes can also be used to set off a clause parenthetical expression or list.

It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. To make an em dash in microsoft word use the shortcut alt0151 or click insert click symbols on the far right select more symbols special characters and em dash. At some point between 1680 and 2016 i pinpoint it in 1996 nefarious forces took over in legal writing. Here are the basics. Both sentences should be complete and their content should be very closely related.

The em dash is used to make a break be tween parts of a sen tence. Use em dashes to highlight information or give emphasis to matter that is independent of the main sentence. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. You can use a colon to connect two sentences when the second sentence summarizes sharpens or explains the first. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom.

Its principal use is as an equivalent of to when marking a span or range of dates page numbers scores and the like. You could use commas here instead but dashes change the emphasis b. Em dashes may also be used to tack on an important afterthought at the end of a sentence. Today brackets and parentheses are misused often enough to make any sensible reader. Use it when a comma is too weak but a colon semi colon or pair of paren the ses is too strong.