Today we're going to talk about dashes — but not that kind. The em dash has gotten a lot of attention in recent years because of its tendency to show up in AI-generated writing. Some of us who are longtime lovers of the em dash (including the humans behind this newsletter 🙋‍♀️) might pause before using it now, for fear of giving the wrong impression about how our writing was generated. (For the record, we still lean into the em dash, but you do you.)

The en dash is a close relative of the em dash, but it's much less talked about. It's longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash. You might see it in sports scores: Team USA defeated Canada 2–1 in overtime to win Olympic gold.

But writing nerds and eagle-eyed observers will notice it elsewhere as well. Consider this sentence:

When she started teaching there, she had to adjust to a high school-level curriculum.

We often use hyphens for compound modifiers (two words that work together to modify a noun: full-time job, for example). So it's possible for you to read that sentence to mean that it was an elevated school-level curriculum.

Enter the en dash, which puts a little more space between the second word of a two-word phrase and the additional adjective:

When she started teaching there, she had to adjust to a high school–level curriculum.

You see this more commonly in modifiers that are proper nouns: She started working at the Los Angeles–based company last year.

This is one of those rules that you might not have noticed before, but now that you know, you won't be able to unsee it 👀

What's your take on em and en dashes? Hit reply and let us know.

❤ Team Stylebot

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