em-dash

Interruption's punctuation mark

An em-dash is the longest of the three dashes in typography, roughly the width of the letter M.

It sets off parenthetical material with more emphasis than commas or parentheses: The answer—if there even is one—won't come easily.

It can also introduce a dramatic pause or shift: She opened the door—and screamed.

Often typed as two hyphens (--) when the character isn't available.

interruption

interjection

Emotional outcry word class

insertion · break-in · cutoff · mid-sentence · afterthought · appositive · tangent · exclamation · abrupt · sudden

pause

breath

Air taken in

caesura · timing · suspense · delay · emphasis

punctuation

hyphen

Mark joining compound words

  • colonLarge intestine section
  • semicolonPunctuation joining related clauses
  • commaPunctuation marking pauses

ellipsis · parentheses · bracket · quotation · apostrophe · slash · virgule · interrobang · pilcrow · ampersand

attribution

said

Verbally expressed, past tense

citation · credit

typesetting

mutton

Adult sheep flesh

  • ruleGoverning principle or standard
  • nutHard-shelled seed
  • kerningLetter-pair spacing adjustment

glyph · character · typeface · leading · tracking · justification · linotype · monospace · proportional · typeset

range

span

Distance between endpoints

  • throughFrom start to finish
  • toPreceding infinitive verbs
  • fromIndicating origin or source

between · interval · dates · years · pages · scores · route · connection

Categories
Opposites
punctuation length/size

em-dashhyphen

Mark joining compound words

en-dash · minus sign · comma · parentheses · colon

stylistic effect

em-dashcomma

Punctuation marking pauses

parentheses · period · semicolon · colon

Family

dash, dashes

Familiarity
Top 500,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Concrete · Rated G