stgk 25.2.06

[Kenzie]

47a Is it en dash, em dash or something entirely different please?

[Dkeyse]

It's en dash

[Aeolus]

No its not; it's an em dash.

An en dash separates numbers, an em dash separates sentence parts.

[rfhenryuk]

In fact either can be used to separate letters, but it would appear that em dash is correct when used parenthetically. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_(punctuation)

[Aeolus]

In a nut shell rfhnryuk

Dictionary.com has:

em�dash or em dash ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mdsh)
n.
A symbol ( - ) used in writing and printing to indicate a break in thought or sentence structure, to introduce a phrase added for emphasis, definition, or explanation, or to separate two clauses.


en�dash or en dash ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ndsh)
n.
A symbol ( - ) used in writing or printing to connect continuing or inclusive numbers or to connect elements of a compound adjective when either of the elements is an open compound, as 1880-1945 or Princeton-New York trains.

[Kenzie]

Thank you very much everyone for your replies. The link to wikipedia was very useful - think I'll go with em (and we'll see what MM has to say about it next Saturday)