“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Mark Twain, 1888 letter to George Bainton
Twain’s witty language takes center stage, but it’s his use of the dash that creates the dramatic pause before the reader is plunged into the vivid finish.
The short, horizontal lines known as hyphens and dashes have small size differences, and their misuse might not be as conspicuous as differences between the almost right word and the right word, yet their misapplication can be jarring. Imagine if instead of “really a large matter—it’s the difference between,” Twain had penned “really a large matter-it’s the difference between.” Or picture a writer separating a word with an em dash rather than a hyphen, such as “ten—minute intervals.”
A properly used dash can provide a dramatic punch, full of energy as the flow of the sentence is boldly interrupted; an improperly used one can produce a discordant eyesore.
The Chicago Manual of Style lists five lengths of hyphens and dashes:
- – the hyphen
- – the en dash
- — the em dash
- —— the 2-em dash
- ——— the 3-em dash
There are even more of these short horizontal lines (eg., minus sign, figure dash, soft hyphen, horizontal rule), but we will confine our discussion to these five. And even with just these five, writers are often conflating their use, seemingly not realizing their distinct functions. In many cases, they are no more interchangeable than the lightning bug and the lightning.
The hyphen
The hyphen (-) is the shortest of our five punctuation marks and the one that is standard on keyboards (without, you know, needing to perform “control-alt-minus sign” or “insert symbol” in Word).
Hyphens provide linkage between words and between characters, such as:
- Compound
adjectives
- e.g., left-handed baseball player, ten-minute interval, one-third of the members, state-of-the-art facility, fifty-two-year-old man, family-owned restaurant, up-to-date information.
- Compound nouns
- e.g., Asian-American, Vice-President, President-elect
- Compound
verbs
- e.g., I want to test-drive that blue car; you need to double-click.
- Compound
names
- e.g., Fayad-Costa or Knowles-Carter
- Characters
- e.g., His name is spelled S-a-n-c-h-e-z, not S-a-n-c-h-e-s.
- Intervals
and numbers
- e.g., The 2019-2020 academic calendar. There were 300-350 people present. His telephone number is 323-555-6439. [Most publishers use the en dash rather than a hyphen: 2019–2020, 300–350. And this is where the “figure dash” comes in; as wide as a standard numeral, it is used as the separator in phone numbers: 323‒555‒6349.]
Note how hyphens can clarify otherwise confusing sentences and phrases, such as “Gouldsboro has little-town charm” versus “Gouldsboro has little town charm”; or “man-eating shark” versus “man eating shark”; or “small-animal hospital” versus “small animal hospital.”
A missing hyphen can send a fan base into a frenzy if someone tweets that their favorite player has “resigned,” versus being “re-signed.”
While compound adjectives before the modified word are hyphenated, the hyphen is dispensable when the compound modifier comes after the described noun. Nor are proper nouns hyphenated when used as a compound adjective, such as “Academy Award winner.” (Remember that adverbs ending in “ly” are not hyphenated, either.)
With few exceptions, spaces around the hyphen are invariably omitted. One exception is the hanging hyphen, such as the first hyphen in the phrase “nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature,” where there will be a space after the hyphen but not before.
The hyphen is easily found on most computer keyboards between the “0” and the”=” (equals sign).
The second part of this article—reviewing the en dash, em dash, 2-em dash, and 3-em dash— will be posted next month.