How To Use Dashes In Legal Writing

At some point between 1680 and 2016 i pinpoint it in 1996 nefarious forces took over in legal writing.

How to use dashes in legal writing. You could use commas here instead but dashes change the emphasis b. Use em dashes to highlight information or give emphasis to matter that is independent of the main sentence. Use it when a comma is too weak but a colon semi colon or pair of paren the ses is too strong. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. To make an em dash in microsoft word use the shortcut alt0151 or click insert click symbols on the far right select more symbols special characters and em dash.

Use parentheses to set off matter that you want to minimize or that is helpful but not essential. It never takes a space before or after the mark. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Dashes can also be used to set off a clause parenthetical expression or list. The em dash is used to make a break be tween parts of a sen tence.

Both sentences should be complete and their content should be very closely related. Our clients singh lafrance and ivanoff have sent us the documents we requested. You can use a colon to connect two sentences when the second sentence summarizes sharpens or explains the first. Em dashes may also be used to tack on an important afterthought at the end of a sentence. His neighbor with whom he had had several serious disagreements removed a section of the fence.

The em dash puts a nice pause in the text and it is un der used in pro fes sional writing. Here are the basics. Today brackets and parentheses are misused often enough to make any sensible reader. Its principal use is as an equivalent of to when marking a span or range of dates page numbers scores and the like. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom.