Dashes and parentheses indicate an “aside” to the point you are making in your sentence. Although sometimes considered interchangeable, each serves a specific purpose in your writing. Dashes interrupt your writing to insert an interjection or pause, while parentheses gently add information to your point. A word of caution: although parentheses can be used throughout all writing genres, dashes are rarely used in formal academic research. Dashes are more common in fiction writing and in more casual texts. Another word of caution: make sure that you are introducing relevant additional information with your dashes or parentheses and that it is not just added for fluff. Strive to be clean and clear in your writing. In this handout, we have provided some guidelines for using each punctuation mark. The DashAn em dash—inserted by typing Control+Alt+Minus between the words it separates—signals an abrupt break in thought. It can be seen as “surprising” the reader with information. If used judiciously it can mark a longer, more dramatic pause and provide more emphasis than a comma can. If overused, it creates an impression of haste and carelessness and can diminish cohesion in your paragraphs. Em dashes are useful in early drafts to capture thoughts and afterthoughts, but in revising you may need to delete them in favor of punctuation marks that better express your ideas, such as commas (see our handout on Commas for more information). Think carefully before peppering your papers with them.
If you wish to use dashes effectively here are some guidelines: If the main sentence resumes, a second dash is needed. Don’t allow a comma to substitute for the second dash, and be sure that your sentence would make sense if the part without the dashes were omitted: Example: The actors bowed—except for the horse—knowing they blew everyone away! If the main sentence resumes, a second dash is needed. Don’t allow a comma to substitute for the second dash, and be sure that your sentence would make sense if the part without the dashes were omitted: Example: The actors bowed—except for the horse—knowing they blew everyone away! Don’t combine dashes with other punctuation marks: Inappropriate: They acquired several horses at the fair, —a winner, a loser, and a beer-drinking mare. Appropriate: They acquired several horses at the fair—a winner, a loser, and a beer drinking mare. Use dashes to mark the beginning and end of a series, which might otherwise get confused, with the rest of the sentence: Example: The three female characters—the wife, the nun, and the jockey—are the incarnation of excellence. Dashes are also used to mark the interruption of a sentence in dialogue: Example: “Help! This horse is going too fast,” the actor yelled. “I think I am fall—.”
The ParenthesesParentheses also signify a break in thought, but they mark an addition of information rather than an interruption like dashes do. Rather than a surprise (like dashes), parentheses are a gentler insertion in your sentence. Also like dashes, parentheses should be used sparingly. Too many can break the clarity and flow of your ideas. Another thing to keep in mind is that they are often seen as casual in tone, so make sure they are appropriate for the style of writing you are using. If not, punctuation marks such as commas are often more academically appropriate. If you wish to use parentheses effectively here are some guidelines: Parentheses can be used to set off incidental information such as numbers, dates, examples, and references: Example: The show will run for a staggering seventeen (17) weekends. Example: A recent study examined wellness practices among Kentucky Derby winning jockeys (Calamine, 2012). Example: The use of “human” as a noun (“Humans are sentient beings”) has been criticized. No mark of punctuation should ever precede a parentheses, but you can use punctuation after the closing parentheses if necessary. The rule is that the parentheses shouldn’t affect the punctuation of the main statement: Example: After several weeks of exercises (memory and voice), he finally began to feel competent. If the enclosed matter is the last part of the sentence, the period comes after the parentheses, as in the next example: Example: Horses should be regarded as assets (but only the working kind). Like dashes, parentheses can be overused, as in: Example: Though making a production about a winning horse has its dilemmas (having the space and the janitors necessary) and the normal problems expected in any play (big egos, emotional cast, and a low budget), it is an immense satisfaction to make it happen.
First, look it up in the dictionary and go with what they say. If you’re still not sure, read this. There are two situations where you’ll likely to need a hyphen. When an adjective is made up of more than one wordWe call these compound adjectives. This is how they work: An adjective describes a noun, like ‘the written word’. A compound adjective does the same thing, but it’s made up of more than one word, like ‘round-the-clock support’. A compound adjective usually gets a hyphen when it comes before a noun, like in ‘a well-honed piece of writing’. But if the first word ends in ‘ly’, like in ‘a specially designed workshop’, you don’t need a hyphen. When it comes after the noun, the compound adjective usually doesn’t get a hyphen. So, we say an easy-to-remember number, but the number is easy to remember. Same goes for up to date—if it’s before a noun it needs a hyphen. A document is up to date but it’s an up-to-date document. After a prefixIf you’re adding a prefix like ‘pre’, ‘un’, ‘non’ or ‘anti’ to a proper adjective (that’s an adjective made from a proper noun [one with a capital letter] like American, Japanese, Victorian), use a hyphen: un-American, non-EC countries. Long-established words like ‘preamble’ and ‘degrade’ don’t need a hyphen as the prefix is seen as fully fused. Use a hyphen with prefixes or suffixes (such as ‘-like’) when you’ve repeated letters in a word, but you pronounce them separately, as in shell-like or anti-inflammatory. Because shelllike looks weird. Also use a hyphen if there’s a risk of mispronouncing a word. So, you’d hyphenate co-worker, for example, to stop people tripping up over ‘cow’ when they read it. But coordinator doesn’t need one. And we hyphenate words that are spelled the same but can have very different meanings or different pronunciations (called homographs, fact-fans) like ‘recreation’ (fun) and ‘re-creation’ (creating again). Some examples of the difference a hyphen can make: A man-eating chicken—a chicken that eats humans.A man eating chicken—a man who’s eating chicken.She re-covered the sofa—she put a new cover on the sofa. She recovered the sofa—from where?
Summary: A comprehensive rundown on the proper use of the hyphen. Two words brought together as a compound may be written separately, written as one word, or connected by hyphens. For example, three modern dictionaries all have the same listings for the following compounds: hair stylist hairsplitter hair-raiser Another modern dictionary, however, lists hairstylist, not hair stylist. Compounding is obviously in a state of flux, and authorities do not always agree in all cases, but the uses of the hyphen offered here are generally agreed upon.
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When in the sentence should the writer add a hyphen?
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