The Guide To Punctuation

Dash and Hyphens (ADV. sequel to the hyphen)

Since we covered the hyphen, or what I kept calling it; it was actually a dash when used as a punctuation mark. Anyway, as I didn't have much knowledge about the differences between the dash and hyphen, I decided to look it up to get the general idea, and from there I was able to understand it. Now, although I did call this a "sequel to the hyphen," we're not going to be reviewing that right now, as I explained it earlier. If you hadn't read my hyphen chapter, then I advise you to do so, as some of the things I'll be explaining will be difficult. Let's get studying.

In modern writing, we now often find these marks, "-", or, "--". These are the two types of dashes--m-dash and n-dash--that writer's use, and I'm pretty sure when you started reading contemporary literature, you were confused what these marks meant. Well, like I explained earlier, these marks are like commas. You can use them like commas, but I advise you to keep using commas as the majority of your punctuation. Anyhow, the hyphen has two uses: being a link to two or more words, or a punctuation mark that emulates a comma.

The link is only specific in linking two or more words together. For example, up-to-date, well-known, and back-to-back. These three are linked by hyphens. As for the other use, this is what it is used for: "when Johnny flew up in the sky--and a feeling of euphoria filled his entire body--he felt as though he rather live up in the air than down at earth." The dash I used on this sentence is called a m-dash, which is when the dash is the size of a letter "m," and when you use them, be sure not to add any spaces before and after the dash--it's not needed.

You'll rarely see anyone use this dash since most writers find it comfortable to use the n-dash. The n-dash is the same as the m-dash, except for how for how you input it. For example, "when Johnny flew up in the sky - and a feeling of euphoria filled his entire body - he felt as though he rather live up in the air than down at earth." It's the same as the example before, but you only put a single dash instead of two, making it reasonable why they call it the n-dash, because it's the size of the letter "n." Also, this n-dash needs to be spaced in both ends.

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Thanks for supporting this book. I really appreciate the reads that this guide had been getting, and I've been thinking of making a guide to grammar, where it'll be covering nouns, adjectives, gerunds, and etc. Anyway, be sure to like and comment. See ya next time guys. :D