A Dash of En and Em

Dashes—specifically, en dashes and em dashes—are like hyphens, but longer. And though there’s some overlap in how hyphens and dashes are used, dashes play a role all their own.

To find out more—or to test your dash knowledge—take the quiz.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in most of the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Style guides sometimes disagree. Except for a few details that can be readily verified in standard dictionaries and encyclopedias, the answers in this quiz rely on the information in The Chicago Manual of Style.

[Editor’s note: This quiz relies on and links to the 17th edition of CMOS.]

Chicago Style Workout 62: Dashes

1. Each of the following marks is in the same font and size. Assuming that one of them is a hyphen and another is an em dash, which one is most likely to be an en dash?

‑

–

—

2. In Chicago style, an en dash most often means

“to” or “through”

“between” or “among”

3. CMOS recommends an en dash for a phrase like “pre–Jazz Age recordings.” Why?

Because it’s fancy

Because “Jazz Age” can’t be hyphenated

4. Some style guides—notably the AP Stylebook—do not recommend using an en dash, even in number ranges. Which character is used instead?

a hyphen

an em dash

5. An en dash is represented with the same character as a minus sign.

True

False

6. The em dash gets its name from

the letter M

the word emphasis

7. Em dashes can be used as an alternative to

parentheses

commas

colons

all of the above

8. An editor or proofreader working with pencil on paper would write an em dash as

an equals sign

the letter M above a short horizontal line

9. In ordinary prose styled according to CMOS, an em dash might appear immediately next to any of the following marks except one. Which one is that?

a question mark

an exclamation point

a period

a comma

a quotation mark

10. Some styles call for en dashes instead of Chicago-style em dashes, but with a space on either side – like that.

True

False

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Top image: Salt, by Sue Thompson, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

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