dash

Also known as –, —, ―, ‒, horizontal bar

The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen but shorter than the minus sign; the emdash , longer than either the en dash or the minus sign; and the horizontalbar , whose length varies across typefaces but tends to be between those of the en and em dashes.

AI overview

The dash is a punctuation mark that appears as a long horizontal line, similar to a hyphen but longer and sometimes positioned higher on the line. It comes in several versions—the en dash, em dash, and horizontal bar—each varying in length, and these different dashes serve distinct purposes in writing and typography.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Punctuation mark.mark: —
Punctuation mark.variant1: ‒
Punctuation mark.caption1: Figure dash
Punctuation mark.variant2: –
Punctuation mark.caption2: En dash
Punctuation mark.variant3: —
Punctuation mark.caption3: Em dash

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Show 2 more facts

Commons category: Dashes
Unicode character: —

Sources (4)

via Wikidata · CC0

~38 min read

Article

46 sections

Contents

History
Types of dash
Figure dash
En dash
Usage
Ranges of values
Relationships and connections
Attributive compounds
Differing recommendations
Parenthetic and other uses at the sentence level
Typography
Spacing
<span class="anchor" id="Encoding, substitution, and keyboard shortcuts"></span>Encoding and substitution
Itemization mark
Em dash
Usage
Colon-like use
Simple equivalence (or near-equivalence) of colon and em dash
Inversion of the function of a colon
Parenthesis-like use
Simple equivalence (or near-equivalence) of paired parenthetical marks
Subtle differences in punctuation
Interruption of a speaker
Interruption by someone else
Self-interruption
Quotation
Quotation mark–like use
Attribution of quote source
Redaction
Itemization mark
Repetition
Typographic details
Spacing and substitution
Approximating the em dash with two or three hyphens
Usage in AI-generated text
Horizontal bar
Swung dash
Typing the characters
Unicode
Unicode dash characters
Related characters
In other languages
See also
Explanatory notes
References
External links

Typical uses of dashes are to mark a break in a sentence, to set off an explanatory remark—similar to parentheses—or to show spans of time or ranges of values.