How To Use Hyphens And Dashes
Hyphens generally hyphens are used to join two words or parts of words together while avoiding confusion or a hyphen joins two or more words together while a dash separates words into parenthetical statements.
How to use hyphens and dashes. Num indicates you should use the keys from the number pad after enabling number lock on your keyboard. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom. For mac press option hyphen key. For pc type ctrl minus. Dashes can be used to create emphasis in a sentence.
Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. Hyphens are shorter lines. When should you use a hyphen. These are known as compound words. Hyphens are shorter than dashes and link two words so the word or phrase makes sense.
Keyboard shortcuts for hyphens and dashes as you can see in the symbol dialog you can type hyphens and dashes using keyboard shortcuts. They are most often used to show connections between words that are working as a unit for example you might see adjectives like well intentioned or to spell certain words like e mail. They are used to make a connection between two words working as a unit or when two words have a combined meaning. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. A hyphen is also used to separate syllables of a word when there is a line break though this was more prevalent when type was set by hand rather than electronically.
Hyphens are not the same as dashes. It s not interchangeable with other types of dashes. For pc laptop since you don t have a numeric pad you ll have to use the special symbols menu of your word processor. Like the hyphen there should never be a space between the en dash and its adjacent content. A hyphen is a punctuation mark that s used to join words or parts of words.
Dashes can be used to add parenthetical statements or comments in much the same way as you would use brackets. If you re not sure whether a compound word has a hyphen or not check your preferred dictionary. Hyphen en dash or em dash a hyphen is used to connect two words that function as a particular concept or when linked together form a particular modifier. To insert an en dash. Let us see how to use these hyphens and dashes when typing documents in word.