The dash is the Kim Kardashian of punctuation marks: misplaced, over-exposed, shamelessly self-promoting, always eager to elbow out her jealous sisters the comma, colon, and semicolon. My friend and ...

For writers at work, punctuation can slip from a matter of convention to one of obsession. I just finished my poetry thesis last week, and I’m embarrassed to admit the number of times I changed ...

Are you a dashaholic? It’s a thing, apparently. I’m more of a colon abuser myself: as if everything I write is so important it requires the colon’s drumroll effect. I’ve known more than a few comma ...

If you've used ChatGPT — or seen AI-generated text — you've likely spotted an em dash. The punctuation mark is not new, but it has been flung into the forefront of social media and everyday writing ...

The hyphen (-) is a short bit, used in compound words and to break words between syllables when they run over the end of a line. The en dash (–) is reserved for compound compounds—it’s an overgrown ...

Punctuation is a set of specific marks or symbols that we used to express the meaning of our sentences clearly and to make the flow of the text smooth. It shows us where we need to pause, it separates ...

Learn the difference between hyphen, en dash, and em dash with simple rules and examples. It improves clarity, accuracy, and ...

Writing coach and CUNY Journalism Press editor Timothy Harper tells us how to properly use ellipses, em dashes, and parentheses. FULL TRANSCRIPT: The default, typically, when we’re using punctuation ...

Now that you know what distinguishes the workhorse hyphen (-) and the endangered en dash (–) from the crazy-versatile em dash (—), here’s the backstory: how those characters are formed on the keyboard ...