Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes): Difference between revisions

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcut [[:|WP:DASH WP:MOSDASH]]

Wikipedia should use standard rules of English punctuation for dashes. However, some current or future automated Wiki tools make it important to understand how to represent these dashes.

True dashes convey semantic meaning the hyphen lacks, and some feel it makes the rendered text easier to read. They may not display consistently in all browsers. (Please see the talk page.)

Now that Wikipedia uses UTF-8, these can be entered directly into the article markup. To enter an em dash after your cursor, for instance, you can click the "—" link below the edit box See Help:Special characters.

The hyphen, or more accurately the hyphen-minus (-), is the shortest dash-like character visually. Traditionally, this was used only for hyphenating words, creating line breaks, or as the minus sign. For historical reasons, it is the only dash-like character on the keyboard. Dashes have been implemented in various ways that do not display consistently in all software, leading the hyphen to be used in place of dashes.

The minus sign (−) is designed to be the same width and height as a plus or equals sign, and should be used in non-TeX equations or to designate negative numbers. It is supported in almost all browsers, and can be used in Wikipedia. It is possible to use the HTML entity − or the numeric form −.

The en dash (–) is slightly longer than the hyphen and figure dash and about half the width of an em dash. It indicates duration, such as when you could substitute the word "to" (as in a range of dates). An en dash placed between numbers or in compounds does not have spaces around it: for example Paris–Brussels timetable, Ages 7–77. Some writers, however, prefer to place a space on either side in complex ranges: 1 January 2003 – 31 December 2004. The en dash can also be used as a hyphen in compound adjectives in which one part consists of two words or a hyphenated word: for example, pre–World War II period; and it is used in compound adjectives referring to multiple people, so as to clarify that for example the name of the Poincaré–Birkhoff–Witt theorem refers to three people while the Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture refers to two (one of them called Swinnerton-Dyer). The Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) recommends that the word "to" be used instead of an en dash when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, such as a range of units. The en dash is supported in almost all browsers, and can be used in Wikipedia. Use the HTML entity – (not the numeric form –; see below) or type it in directly if your keyboard allows it.

The em dash (—) is twice as long as the en dash, and about the length of the capital M in any particular font. The em dash is used in much the same way as a colon or set of parentheses: it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a period is too strong and a comma too weak. An em dash can have spaces on either side or not, depending on the writer's preference or in-house style rules; and some writers prefer to use the en dash (spaced) for this parenthetical use. Em dashes are sometimes used incorrectly to separate lists of items from their definitions. (A colon should be used instead. Wikipedia also has a defined syntax for definitions, which is often preferable to colons. See How to edit for details.)

The em dash is supported in almost all browsers, and can be used in Wikipedia. Use the HTML entity —, which the MediaWiki engine automatically converts into a numeric entity in the rendered HTML. The numeric entities, — and —, should be avoided in the wikitext: they produce the same result in the rendered HTML, but are more difficult for editors to interpret. You may also type an em dash directly if your keyboard allows it.

Historically a double hyphen (--) was used to represent an em dash because on a typewriter the hyphens tend to connect, creating a dash in appearance. This is still an acceptable way of representing the em dash as it will not cause misreads across platforms or with different language encoding.

See also Dash (punctuation) for detailed discussion of usage and more dashes.

The figure dash ("‒") should not be used on Wikipedia. It is slightly longer than the hyphen, usually the same length as the en dash. It is the same width as a number, and is used in telephone numbers (e.g. 012‒3456‒7890), to indicate a missing value in numeric data, etc. It can be typed with the numeric form ‒. Since browser support for it is lacking, use a hyphen in the Wikipedia instead.

The quotation dash ("―") should not be used on Wikipedia. This dash is used to introduce quoted text. If rendered at all, in most fonts it is rendered identically to the em dash. It can be typed only with the numeric form, ―. Since browser support for it is nearly nonexistent, in Wikipedia use the em dash instead.

The following are not dashes:

• The macron ("¯") is a diacritic mark. Do not use it as a dash.
• The underscore or lowline ("_") is another diacritic mark in some languages. It is also used as a non-breaking space or as a space replacement in some computer operating systems. Do not use it as a dash.

In the interests of Wikipedia:Wikilove, editors are encouraged to be accepting of others' dash preferences and not to modify a chosen style arbitrarily in the same way as they would refrain from arbitrarily changing "artefact" to "artifact" (or vice versa). The following five dash styles are currently in use on Wikipedia.

• Tight (unspaced) em dashes—like this. Entered by means of — or you can type it in directly if your keyboard allows it.
• Spaced em dashes — like this.
  • A very rare subset of this style separates the dash from the surrounding words using hair spaces; since many browsers cannot display hair spaces, these appear on the display as simple tight em dashes.
  • An additional touch used by some editors is to include a nonbreaking space before the dash — with  — — to keep dashes from appearing at the start of a line.
• Spaced en dashes – like this. Entered by means of – or you can type it in directly if your keyboard allows it. (Note: an unspaced en dash may be used to indicate a range of numbers, but unspaced en dashes should not be used for the parenthetical use under discussion in this Guideline.)
  • (The  – line-break trick is used here, too.)
• A pair of hyphens -- either spaced or unspaced--like that. These are simple to type, but are regarded as ugly by some. They may be taken care of in the future by automatic conversion bots or scripts. Editors who do not want the bother of keying in special characters or HTML entities are free to type their dashes in this fashion. A pair of hyphens is equivalent to an em dash.
• A single spaced hyphen - like this. This is considered an en dash rendered in the same "typewriter" style as the double hyphen for em dashes, above.

The standard US 101 key keyboard layout does not provide dedicated keys for entering dashes and other typographic punctuation signs missing from ASCII. However, some operating systems have extended these standards and some permit users to customize the keyboard layout. Many Wikipedia editors find that customizing their keyboard to provide additional Unicode characters is by far the most convenient and efficient method of entering them.

The U.S. English keyboard layout on all Macintosh computers (since 1984) allows a user to type dashes:

• en dash: option-hyphen
• em dash: option-shift-hyphen

Under Microsoft Windows, various special characters can be entered by holding down the Alt key while typing a sequence of four digits on the numeric keypad. For dashes, these digits are:

• en dash: alt-0-1-5-0
• em dash: alt-0-1-5-1

Under recent versions of X11, you can obtain the em dash (—) by pressing the Compose key followed by - - - (triple hyphen-minus), and the en dash (–) can be obtained by pressing the Compose key followed by - - . (hyphen-minus, hyphen-minus, dot).