The Dash—

1. The Dash— Not a Hyphen (-)

2. The Hyphen (what a dash isn’t) • Advice—consult a dictionary to determine whether a word is hyphenated. • Compound words may be hyphenated (water-repellant) • Compound words may be one word (waterproof) • Compound words may be two words (water table)

3. More Uses of the Hyphen (-) • Use a hyphen to connect two or more words functioning together as an adjective before a noun. • Mrs. Douglas gave Toshiko a seashell and some newspaper-wrapped fish to take home to her mother. • Richa Gupta is not a well-known candidate. • Do you prefer first-, second-, or third-class tickets?

4. More Reasons to Use a Hyphen (-) • Hyphenate the written form of fractions and of compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine. • One-fourth of my salary goes to pay my child care expenses. • Use a hyphen with the prefixes all-, ex-, and self- and with the suffix –elect. • The charity is funneling more money into self-help projects. • Will Romney or Obama be the president-elect in December?

5. More Uses of the Hyphen (-) • A hyphen is used in some words to avoid ambiguity or to separate awkward double or triple letters. • Bicycling in the city is my favorite form of recreation. • The film was praised for its astonishing re-creation of nineteenth-century London. • Use a hyphen to divide a word at the end of a line. (Never divide a one-syllable word or leave fewer than three letters on the next line.) • When I returned home after a truly delightful semester, I didn’t recog- nizeone face on the magazine covers.

6. So What about the Dash(—)? When typing, use two hyphens to form a dash (—). Do not put spaces before or after the dash. Your word processing program may have an “em-dash,” which you may use instead of the double hyphen (--). It’s the same thing!

7. When to Use a Dash • To set off parenthetical material that deserves emphasis e.g., • Everything that went wrong—from the peeping Tom at her window last night to my head-on collision today—we blamed on our move.

8. Another Use of the Dash • To set off appositives that contain commas (An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that renames a nearby noun. Ordinarily most appositives are set off with commas, but when the appositive itself contains commas, a pair of dashes helps the readers see the relative importance of all the pauses.)

9. For Example • In my hometown the basic needs of people—likefood, clothing, and shelter—are less costly than in a big city like Los Angeles.

10. Another Reason to Use a Dash • To prepare for a list, a restatement, an amplification, or a dramatic shift in tone or thought • Along the wall are the bulk liquids—sesame seed oil, honey, safflower oil, maple syrup, and peanut butter. • Consider the amount of sugar in the average person’s diet—104 pounds per year, 90 percent more than that consumed by our ancestors. • In the above examples, you could use a colon (:) instead of a dash if you wished.

11. More Examples of Correctly Used Dashes • Everywhere we looked there were little kids—a box of Cracker jacks in one hand and mommy’s or daddy’s sleeve in the other. • The above is an amplification. • Kiere took a few steps back, came running full speed, kicked a mighty kick—and missed the ball. • The above is a dramatic shift in tone.

12. CAUTION • Dashes are elegant and casual, but unless there is a specific reason for using a dash, avoid it. Unnecessary dashes create a choppy effect. • Insisting that our young people learn to use computers as instruction tools—for information retrieval—makes good sense. Herding them—sheeplike—into computer technology does not. • BAD EXAMPLE ABOVE!