Proofreading

Hyphens, en dashes and em dashes: how to use them

~ Charlie Hankers

They might all look vaguely similar, but hyphens and dashes serve very different purposes. Here’s a quick rundown of their differences and how to use them.

Hyphen ‐

The hyphen is shorter than both dashes (although in some typefaces, it can look identical). It has two purposes in writing and typography: joining words and splitting words.

Joining words

When two words (or a word and a prefix/suffix) are being made into one, they are joined by a hyphen. Hyphens are often used to join two parts of an adjective to prevent ambiguity. Consider:

  • a cold-blooded animal (the blood is cold, not the animal that happens to have blood)
  • a second-hand clothes shop (the clothes are second-hand)
  • a six-year-old girl (the girl is six years old)
  • there were six year-old girls (there were six girls who were 12 months old)

When a hyphenated word comes into popular usage, it usually loses its hyphen. Nobody would describe an aircraft as being super-sonic any more.

Splitting words

In typography, if a word is so long that it would cause unacceptable word spacing if it were to go on the next line, it can be split with a hyphen. In word processors, you can specify that a hyphen is optional. That means that if the whole word fits on a line, it will not be broken, but if it doesn’t you can specify where it will split.

It’s good practice to split words as naturally as possible, so the reader gets an idea of the pronunciation. That usually means splitting at the end of each syllable.  For example:

  • man-slaughter, not mans-laughter
  • co-operate, not coop-erate
  • Mersey-side, not Mers-eyside
  • proof-read-ing, not pro-ofre-ading

Don’t split words with one syllable.

As a copywriter, I don’t really need to worry about this kind of hyphenation because I don’t really know where individual words will appear on the page. It’s a job for typesetters and designers.

Splitting hyphenated words

If a word is naturally hyphenated, it is bad practice to split it anywhere else if it doesn’t fit on the line. If the natural hyphen cannot be used to break to word, consider changing the letter spacing or word spacing.

Hyphens and word counts

A hyphenated word counts as one word. However, most word counts are specified for visual reasons, so don’t worry if you have a lot of hyphenated words and the count seems low. Usually, a single hyphenated word will count as two from a design perspective.

Do Hyphenated Words in Title Case Have Capitals?

Whether hyphenated words in title case* have both component words starting with a capital depends on the style. Technically, a hyphenated word is one word, so only the first letter should be capitalised. However, some styles demand that both, or all, component words, plus prefixes and suffixes, start with a capital.

* “Title case” is the heading style to this section, where each major words starts with a capital, as opposed to “sentence case”, where normal capitalisation is used (like all the other headings here).

En dash –

The en dash has three main purposes: as a bridge between items in a range; as a type of parenthetical symbol; or in place of a colon or semicolon. Its name comes from the fact that it’s the length of a lower-case letter n.

Bridging with an en dash

Where there’s a range of numbers, they can be shown with an unspaced en dash in place of the word “to”. It also works with letters, when they are being used alphabetically. So we can write:

  • The job will be ready in three to four days or The job will be ready in 3–4 days.
  • Complete sections A to E or Complete sections A–E

Note that there is no space before or after the dash. Typographically, however, the dash can be used to break over two lines, like a hyphen.

An en dash can also be used to denote journeys, periods of time or pieces of infrastructure. Again, the dash replaces the word “to”:

  • The Stockton–Darlington railway
  • The Victorian–Edwardian eras

Using bridging en dashes with units of measurement

If you’re using a dash to show a range of units, you only need to use the unit once.

  • 56–62 °C, not 56 °C–62 °C
  • 3–6 o’clock, not 3 o’clock–6 o’clock

If you want to avoid ambiguity by mentioning the unit twice, use the word “to” instead.

Note: a bridging en dash means “to”, not “and”

Avoid using an en dash to replace the word “and”, particularly when following the word “between”.

  • between 6 and 8 years, not between 6–8 years

En dash as a parenthetical symbol

The second use of the en dash is as a parenthetical symbol. Parentheses are the ( and ) symbols, often called brackets. That gives a clue to the use of en dashes in this context – they are used to separate a word, phrase or clause from the sentence that surrounds it. It’s useful for giving additional information or reminding the reader abut some previously mentioned fact. In most cases, the en dash can be swapped with parentheses, em dashes or commas and the sentence will work perfectly well.

Note that these en dashes are spaced; that is, they have a space before and after them.

  • The farmer – who had been watching closely – took aim and fired.
  • The farmer—who had been watching closely—took aim and fired.
  • The farmer (who had been watching closely) took aim and fired.
  • The farmer, who had been watching closely, took aim and fired.

However, if a sentence is long and convoluted, with several nesting parentheticals, it’s good to mix up the types to aid clarity.

  • The farmer – who had been watching closely and concluded (wrongly) that the foxes were after his chickens – took aim and fired.

is preferable to:

  • The farmer, who had been watching closely and concluded, wrongly, that the foxes were after his chickens, took aim and fired.
  • The farmer (who had been watching closely and concluded (wrongly) that the foxes were after his chickens) took aim and fired.

As a rule, the sentence should work equally well with or without the part that’s parenthesised.

  • The farmer took aim and fired.
  • The farmer – who had been watching closely and concluded that the foxes were after his chickens – took aim and fired.

En dash as a colon or semicolon

A spaced en dash can often replace a colon or a semicolon, and can be advisable if there are already (semi)colons in the sentence.

  • There was only one possible solution: jump.
  • There was only one possible solution – jump.

 

  • I like the summer; it reminds me of home.
  • I like the summer – it reminds me of home.

Em dash —

The em dash is the longest of the dashes, supposedly the length of a letter m (hence its name). It can be used parenthetically or to replace missing words or letters.

Em dash as a parenthetical symbol

The em dash has exactly the same parenthetical purpose as the spaced en dash above. Its use is purely a matter of style. Even parenthetically, it can be either spaced or unspaced, but note that unspaced em dashes do take up a lot or room and can look unsightly. The em dash is generally favoured in the US, whereas in the UK the en dash takes precedence; but there are no set rules here.

Em dash to replace missing words or letters

The em dash can be used to show hidden or missing text. That might be:

  1. to carry a plot (where the writer doesn’t want the reader to find something out
  2. where text is unknown or unknowable
  3. where expletives are used.

Examples:

  1. She finally worked out that C— was the murderer
  2. The ancient engraving said “Lorem I— dolor sit amet, c—tur adi—od tempor
  3. “Come back here, you f—g m—r,” she requested.

Photo: Kristaps Grundsteins

Readability analysis: accept, consider, ignore?

readability analysis computer
~ Charlie Hankers

Imagine the scene. A graphic designer submits some branding materials to a client. The client’s marketing guy feeds the image into a scanner and takes a sip of coffee as the computer does his its work. Ten seconds later, the progress bar reaches 100 and a bullet list in red, amber and green fills the screen. The visuals have been thoroughly assessed, and it’s not looking good.

⬤ Two of the rectangles have long edges that are 3% below golden ratio 
⬤ The model’s smile has an ecstasy coefficient of 0.73, 0.02 below optimum
⬤ The yellow glow is hex #f6f600, not the more pleasing #f6f300
⬤ 28% of the image is in the passive voice
⬤ “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” is not standard English
⬤ The kitten image satisfies the Schrödinger cuteness pudding by 95%

This isn’t a scene from Black Mirror. It is happening right now to graphic designers from Reykjavik to Wellington. And they’re mad as hell.

Actually, that’d be a lousy episode. But it is starting to happen to copywriters. I’m hearing of writers having their work fed through readability algorithms by clients as a first step to being signed off. I wouldn’t say it’s a common phenomenon just yet, but who knows. As a worker with words, I’ve been here before …

Spell Czech 😂

Back in the day, their was a debate among proofreaders a bout weather there daze whirr numbered thanks to spell chequers on whirred processors, and sentences like this one were commonly scene on many an Internet massage bored. Proofreaders would even discuss whether they themselves would ever consider using one. Naturally, most were offended at the mere suggestion of it (but of course we used them – why wouldn’t you?). Once the limitations and undeniable benefits of the spell checker became obvious, we all calmed down. And anyway, we laughed, there would never be such a thing as

Grammar Check!

Yes, we did know that the sentence was fragmented. We even considered correcting our correlative conjunction mismatches. But the rise of the grammar checker still took the writing and editing community by surprise. Checking grammar was much more difficult than comparing words with a dictionary (and ignoring homophones). It required an understanding of language that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

Flawed though grammar checkers are, I must admit to finding the technology remarkable, and I occasionally have a Kasparov v. Deep Blue moment when a particularly complex structural flaw gets flagged, even if 99% of the time it’s a flaw I’d have noticed on second reading. (And never forget that Kasparov lost 4-2, not 6-0. Grammar check mate.)

Readability analysis: the final insult

So here we are. We’ve had our spelling and grammar autocorrected, and now we’re having the very fruits of our trade – our sentences – analysed by emotionless digital gatekeepers. In fact, many of us are willingly submitting our work to the machines whenever we blog. We are allowing our sentences to have their essential components – verbs, voice, adjectives, flow, lengths – judged for correctness by computers.

Is there such a thing as good copy and bad copy? I hope so. No, I think so. Let’s just say you know it when you see it. We can probably agree on that.

But can the measure of good or bad copy really be determined by how far it strays from some arbitrary mathematical mean?

This development doesn’t seem to be satisfying demand from grammarians, publishers or website owners. It seems to be more like the spawn of the SEO sector. I’m not going to argue about SEO. I’ve met and worked with enough SEOs to recognise that they know exactly what they are doing. Their actions have tangible, measurable results, and they are lovely people.

It just seems to me that the rise of readability analysis comes from that mindset – from people who are sure that if they can optimise everything until any rough edges are removed, success will follow.

readability analysis computer

The cursed passive voice

I’m yet to be convinced that readability analysis has reached the stage where its results should be taken as gospel, just as spelling and grammar checkers can still make awkwardly clever mistakes.

The passive voice is a particular favourite of the tests. Yes, it’s good to be active and to have all your subjects and objects actively working on the sentence’s behalf. But passivity often carries a subtlety, a quiet confidence, a sense of not having to try too hard, a feeling that not every sentence has to be a call to action. It’s also a useful way of referring to previous statements without having to restate sentence objects or their pronouns. And it can bring the focus of a sentence to the object rather than the subject, because sometimes it’s the subject that’s more important. This guy gets it.

It can’t simply be stated that the passive voice is bad. Indeed, PV is good enough to be allowed in a recommended[by whom?] 10% of sentences, but go over that and all of a sudden your copy is suboptimal. Do you buy that?

Ultimately, it’s quite easy to identify passive voice algorithmically, and that’s where its prominence in tests comes from. If a sentence feels right to you, the human, it’s right. By all means run your copy through a readability checker, but have an open mind about its results – you risk destroying something beautifully imperfect.

Not the same as reading levels

I’m quite interested in reading levels when it comes to copy. Writing copy that a typical 11-year old would understand (even if it’s for an educated adult audience) seems like a sound concept to me. Your speech patterns and, to a large extent, your everyday vocabulary, are pretty much set in stone by that age. Great copywriters don’t necessarily know loads of fancy words – and they certainly don’t use them in their copy. They’ve learnt to use the words everybody understands efficiently, possibly in unexpected ways that carry new meaning.

Copywriters’ clients usually tell them who their target markets are, but frankly, if you can’t work it out for yourself, you probably shouldn’t be in the business. Good writers know their audiences just as well fashion designers, film-makers and comedians do, and accept that there’s certain language you can’t expect a given audience to respond to.

I think there’s probably a place for machine learning and algorithms to determine good reading levels, and the results I’ve seen can be useful; but the ultimate test of the quality of copy is how well it informs, entertains and converts in the wild. Here’s some good analysis from an avowed rival.

We’re not there yet

Anyway, I’ve said my piece. As I mentioned at the start, it’s still uncommon for clients to reject work on the basis of digital readability analyses. People might not all understand the intricacies of grammar or spelling, but they know when something is readable because, well, they can read it. Any danger comes from people using a digital readability test as their first sweep (as they would with a spell checker) and rejecting perfectly good work on the basis of its results.

Like all creatives, copywriters are good at taking criticism on the chin, and frankly we have it easy – rejected graphic design often means starting again from scratch, whereas we might just have to re-jig a few sentences. (I don’t even know how sculptors ever get to the point where they can submit their work.) Criticism from another human is real and valuable.

In terms of SEO, readability also isn’t a ranking factor per se, although an unreadable site will suffer a higher bounce rate, which is a ranking factor. It would have to be quite dire to cause noticeable bounce compared with, say, slow loading times or bad mobile friendliness, though. The best readability test you can do is to read it yourself and let a few other people read it and to act on their comments. They will be correct roughly 100% of the time.

Image: Sean Batty

How are copy editing and proofreading different?

~ Charlie Hankers

Over 20 years of proofreading and copy editing, I’ve come to accept that most people outside the publishing industry don’t really know the difference between the two disciplines. Usually, when people don’t grasp the differences between two things, it turns out it’s because there really aren’t that many differences. I think this is the case here.

Proofreading and copy editing are both essential publishing tasks, and they’re both working towards the same end – better quality copy – and they overlap in many ways. So why do they have two different titles? Here’s an explanation.

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