The Em-dash and En-dash are on the ‘Special Characters’ menu (Insert | Symbol | More Symbols …) along with many other characters. To indicate ranges (“20-25 degrees”) or to join up words (“Dagg-Bayliss Act 2015”) Word shortcut: Ctrl + Num – (that’s the hyphen/dash on a number pad) “ sometimes used to set off summaries or definitions” En-dash “s how an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop (period) is too strong and a comma too weak” Word shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + Num – (that’s the hyphen/dash on a number pad) Wikipedia has a page on the various dashes with examples of their use. The names come from the amount of horizontal space they use, relative to the M and N characters (lower or upper case, depending on the font). They were not on a standard typewriter keyboard so they weren’t in general use until word-processors made them available to the public. These are two other hyphen-like characters in Word, the Em-dash and the En-dash. If you delve into typography keep in mind that there is a difference. ![]() We’ll use the terms dash & hyphen interchangeably because that’s what most people do. Technically there’s a difference between a dash (aka hyphen-minus), a hyphen and a minus sign, see the table below. In everyday life, most of us use the same key to type all three. We have more on hyphenation and special hyphens below. Lot of other units have latin roots as well.That hyphen is the one to separate hyphenated words. So maybe the use of em and en is based on this kind of classical lingua franca trend, the first movable types and obviously are a good reference point as well. For example, the first printers would use 2x V to create a W and that type only came in use later as the need to translate texts in other languages came and the popularity of mechanical printing grew. Apparently, the first texts printed were latin, that's why some types were not available (That's still a point debated today). The en and em come from the old latin while V and W (another pair of easy "doubling" letters) were not both used at the time when the first types were created (eg. The character is called an em dash because it is 1 em wide,Ī length that varies depending on the font size.Īs for why the M and N where selected as models for these units, that's probably just a matter of circumstances and naming convention. The em dash, m dash, m-rule, or "mutton" (-) is longer than an enĭash. the en dash, with its 1-en width, is in most fonts either a half-em wide or the width of an "n". The en dash, n dash, n-rule, or "nut" (–) is traditionally half ![]() They simply are named this way because of the unit used to measure their width, as it is for the famous "one inch punch" for example! The en dash often shows range or connections. The em dash () is twice as long as the en dash (). ![]() ![]() For more details please refer to the Wikipedia article.Įdit II: Perhaps em – as a typographic unit – literally refers to the letter M and is therefore called "em" in order to avoid confusion between other unit symbols like a m (meter).Īdditionally to the other answers, Wikipedia seems to answer this under the " dash" entry. The en dash is a symbol () that is slightly wider than a hyphen (-). Today the is adopted for common sizes of spaces – an em quad for example is a space that is one em wide. A Geviert (in English quad) was a metal spacer used in letterpress typesetting. Now the question is what means em and en in typographic context really and what are the origins of these terms?Įdit I: In German the terms " Geviertstrich" and " Halbgeviertstrich" are used instead of the terms em and en dash. Em and en refer to units of typographic measurement, not to the letters M or N. The em dash is typically about as wide as a capital H, the en dash is about half as wide. Where the terms en and em are so called typographic units which are equal to or the half of the currently specified point size.īoth dashes are named for the length of a typeface’s lower-case n and upper-case M respectively em dash "-" (Unicode character U+2014 and HTML symbol -).The en dash derives its name from the fact that it is meant to be the same width as the letter N. It can also be used for clarity in forming complex compound adjectives. en dash "–" (Unicode character U+2013 and HTML symbol –) as well as the An en dash is a midsize dash (longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash) that is mostly used to show ranges in numbers and dates.As you know one of the most common versions of the dash in typography are the
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