Dashes

Dash Dexter

“Different lengths. Different jobs.”

What's the problem?

Dashes have different jobs. In this house style, an unspaced em dash (—) marks an interruption, a strongly set-off aside, or an explanatory ending. An aside in the middle needs both boundaries; an aside at the end needs only an opening boundary. An en dash (–) marks an inclusive range. Use “from … to” and “between … and,” not a dash in place of their partners. For these exercises, house style also uses an en dash to connect an open compound such as “New York” to “based.” A hyphen (-) joins the parts of the specific word compound shown. These marks are not interchangeable. Commas and parentheses can also set off supplementary information, with different emphasis; other styles use spaced en dashes for asides. Follow the requested structure and preserve the supplied meaning.

Context: All the files were backed up. This is supplementary information about the files, not a restriction to one subset.

✗ Dash trouble

The files—already backed up were deleted.

✓ Structure clear

The files—already backed up—were deleted.

Why it works

The em dashes bracket the whole aside, so the main sentence remains “The files were deleted.” The second boundary closes the interruption before the main verb. Commas or parentheses could also work elsewhere; this task requests house-style em dashes.