Definition:
A mark of punctuation (—), technically known as an em dash, used to set off a word or phrase after an independent clause or to set off words, phrases, or clauses that interrupt a sentence. Don't confuse the dash with the hyphen. See also:
Etymology:
Probably Scandinavian, akin to the Danish, "to beat"Examples and Observations:
- "By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity--another man's, I mean."
(Mark Twain) - "My cow turned out to be a very large one. The first time I led her out I felt the way I did the first time I ever took a girl to the theater--embarrassed but elated."
(E.B. White, "A Week in November") - "A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses."
(William Strunk, Jr, and E.B. White, The Elements of Style) - "Copper Lincoln cents--pale zinc-coated steel for a year in the war--figure in my earliest impressions of money."
(John Updike, "A Sense of Change," The New Yorker, April 26, 1999) - "The dash is less formal than the semicolon, which makes it more attractive; it enhances conversational tone; and . . . it is capable of quite subtle effects. The main reason people use it, however, is that they know you can't use it wrongly."
(Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, 2003) - "Life, said Samuel Butler, is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument--that, friends, is real wisdom."
(Saul Bellow, "My Paris," 1983) - "[T]he single most momentous change in twentieth-century punctuation [was] the disappearance of the great dash-hybrids. All three of them--the commash ,--, the semi-colash ;--, and the colash :-- (so I name them, because naming makes analysis possible)--are of profound importance to Victorian prose, and all three are now . . . extinct."
(Nicholson Baker, "The History of Punctuation")
Pronunciation: dash
