Writeability

Em dash...or en dash? What's the difference anyway?

Well, it's really all about length. The Em dash is the length of an "m" while the En dash resembles the length of an "n". The En dash is most familiar, and is typically used in the following scenarios:

• Indicating a range: 1954 – 1967, pg. iii – iv, ages 5 – 11, etc.
  
• Connections or relationships: father–son baseball game, Obama–Biden campaign.
• Non-related compound adjectives: Canadian–American relations

The En dash (with spaces on either side) can also stand in for a semi-colon or a set of two commas that separate an injection or secondary thought/phrase within a sentence. For example:

I went to the gym every day – except for Wednesday – so now I'm feeling pretty tired.

Depending on the style school you to which you subscribe, this example above could be said to require Em dashes rather than En dashes. When using an Em dash, spaces are not required given the length of the dash already.

I went to the gym every day—except for Wednesday—so now I'm feeling pretty tired.

In some publications such as newspapers and magazines, where space is limited, En dashes are the way to go given the smaller character size. Otherwise, the Em dash is used to place emphasis on stand-out clauses in prose or dialogue.

If working in MS Word, a single hyphen will extend into an En Dash when you use it in a sentence. To create an Em dash, type two hyphens after a word, followed by the next word and then a space. You'll notice the difference between the two instantly.