English Grammar Workbook For Dummies, with Online Practice, 3rd Edition

Chapter 12

Handling Dashes, Hyphens, and Colons

IN THIS CHAPTER

Placing long and short dashes where they belong

Inserting hyphens to split words and form compounds

Introducing lists, quotations and other material with colons

As your thumbs hover over whatever you’re texting, tweeting, or otherwise sending, do you take the time to tap a few punctuation marks on your tiny keyboard? Maybe you don’t, and maybe you should. In this chapter, you practice inserting dashes (long or short horizontal lines), hyphens (very short horizontal lines), and colons (one dot atop another). These small marks pack a big punch of meaning.

Dashing Off

Before you dash off somewhere, let me explain what dashes do:

• Long dashes insert information. Long dashes — what grammarians call em dashes — break into a sentence. Look back at the sentence you just read. I inserted the technical term for a long dash with two long dashes. When you break into one thought with another, you may use a long dash. Often the inserted material is a definition or explanation, but sometimes it reflects a small change in subject. “Terry went to the museum this morning — she loves abstract art — so she can’t babysit.” The information ...