A dash, or em dash (—), is a punctuation mark that serves various functions in writing. While it might seem intimidating at first, using dashes effectively can add emphasis, clarity, and rhythm to ...

So, long live the em dash — my emotional support punctuation, my grammatical therapist, my ride-or-die in literary delusion.

You use an em-dash if a comma would otherwise make your sentence clunkier, and if a parenthetical feels like overkill. Here’s a few examples of how this works, generally, courtesy of Grammarly: ...

Instead of a pair of brackets, you can also use a pair of dashes (– –) or a pair of commas (, ,) to add extra information to a sentence.. Like brackets, these always come in pairs and are ...

As an em dash abuser, I especially liked this tip: Dashes should emphasize the clauses you consider most important — without using bold or italics — and not only for defining terms.

In English, en dashes are used when Japanese would use a wave dash, such as 'pages 128 to 134.' The exceedingly complex recipe spans pages 128–34. En dashes are also sometimes used to form ...

When to use a dash. A dash (specifically, an em dash) has a totally different purpose. It indicates a significant pause or surprising twist in a sentence.