How To Use Dashes In Fiction
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Em dash ctrl alt minus far top right on the number pad.
How to use dashes in fiction. Cms uses no spaces around em dashes. And of course conventional usage depends on your location united states versus united kingdom and whether your. Dashes that set off text and replace alternative punctuation the en dash and the em dash can be used to set off an augmenting or explanatory word or phrase in a sentence that could stand alone without the insertion. En dashes are generally used to indicate ranges or to act as a substitute in word pairings for to and and. Now for a quick recap on the types of dashes as used in fiction.
If you answered yes professional editor louise harnby has an entire post on hyphens en dashes and em dashes in fiction for you to enjoy. Generally hyphens are used to link words to make other words or phrases. Most commonly a dash connects an independent clause with another with a related thought plus a conjunction like or but yet as for and after the second dash. The dash works somewhat like parentheses or commas but it is used where a stronger punctuation is needed. In fiction the em dash almost always appears with no spaces around it.
Em dashes may set off a parenthetical element or interject an idea not in the sense of a grammatical interjection however in a sentence. How to create em dashes and en dashes. En dash ctrl minus far top right on the number pad. This is in part because smf uses a courier font where every character is the same width so technically a hyphen is going to look the same as an em dash so you need to use two hyphens to indicate an em dash. The em dash is particularly useful in dialogue there is a distressing tendency for some writers to overuse the em dash and i often notice this kind of overuse in amateurish fiction where there are also other problems.
Overuse of the em dash or parentheses or the semicolon or any punctuation marks can make your prose a little. There are four dashes you re most likely to use in fiction. Interjecting thoughts both non fiction and fiction writers will use em dashes in this case. Ap puts spaces on each side of em dashes.