– wait a minute –

What’s the Deal with All These Dashes?

When it comes to writing, have you noticed how often we end up rambling, interrupting ourselves, or veering off in a completely new direction—just like we do in everyday conversation? It’s that “um” or “err” energy making its way from our mouths onto the page. And increasingly, it seems like that’s not only acceptable in writing—it’s pretty much expected.

But here’s the catch: how do we show that pause or interruption in text? Apparently, there’s more than one way to do it. Actually, there are three. And they all look suspiciously similar.

You're kidding me!

Hands up—I’m only just discovering this. Every day really is a school day in my ongoing journey through the ever-confusing land of punctuation.

So... what does indicate a pause?

Thankfully, handy tools like Grammarly have stepped in to give us a heads up in punctuation’s linear trio: the horizontal lines that glue words together, separate ideas, or just let our writing breathe for a moment.

Let’s explore them:

Hyphen (-):

The shortest of the bunch. This little one is mostly used to join words (think “well-known author”) or to split words at the end of a line. It’s functional, neat, and accepted as part of the furniture of everyday writing.

En Dash (–):

Slightly longer, and a bit of a punctuation shapeshifter. It often shows up in number ranges (“pages 5–10”) but can also sneak in for a subtle pause—although it’s often confused with its flashier cousin, the em dash. Nobody mentioned this guy in my entire school education!

Em Dash (—):

Now we’re talking. This is the diva of the dash world. It announces a dramatic pause, an interruption, or a sudden change in thought. It's the punctuation equivalent of someone barging into a room and changing the subject. Again, nobody ever mentioned this option during my school days. Where was it then? Why didn't it get a mention? Maybe it just wasn't a thing back then.

Here’s where things get... odd.

Who exactly decided that a small difference in the length of a line should alter its meaning? Why does it feel like the en dash and em dash are trying to do the same job—just in slightly different guises?

I mean, seriously. The world is already complex enough without us having to choose between three nearly identical punctuation marks to express a single breath in a sentence. Also, if they are not featured on my keyboard, then how do they come out to play on my page? I have discovered the answer to this and it's definitely not going to make life easy. For instance, I just had to copy and paste these em dashes from Word for the title of this blog.

Is it just me, or is this all a bit much? Let me know what you think—because I can’t be the only one having a minor existential crisis over punctuation in my late thirties!