Em-Dashes, En-Dashes, and Hyphens: Oh my!

I have to admit that I did not know the difference between these three characters before my last semester of law school. When was I supposed to learn about these punctuation marks? The last English class I took was in high school, and first-year legal research and writing in law school did NOT cover these little beasties. Therefore, for your knowledge and mine, I present a primer on Em-Dashes, En-Dashes, and Hyphens.

Size: Please note: the examples below show size, not proper use.

• attorney—client [em-dash]
• attorney–client [en-dash]
• attorney-client [hyphen]

Use: Again, this is a very brief summary. Please do not rely on this information as a comprehensive guide.

• Em-Dash: to set off words at the beginning or end of a sentence, with an appositive, and to strongly emphasize a clause
• En-Dash: join terms of equal weight, to designate a span from one value to another, to join sections or chapters when appropriate in that jurisdiction
• Hyphen: phrasal adjectives (look it up if you don’t know), words hyphenated in the dictionary

How to Create in Word:

• Em-Dash: Type your first word, no space, two hyphens, and then your second word. Word will automatically convert the hyphens to an Em-Dash.
• En-Dash: Type your first word, a space, two hyphens, a second space and then your second word. Word will automatically convert the two hyphens surrounded by two spaces to an En-Dash.
• Hyphen: Well. Type the hyphen.

I personally recommend creating keyboard shortcuts for these little guys so you can use them in web browsers as well. I do hope this was useful and for more information I would pick up a legal style guide such as the Redbook. You never know the things you never knew until you read through a legal style guide.