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Punctuation

The period or full stop

The comma

Connecting clauses

Lists in a sentence

Separating lists of adjectives

Parenthetical phrases

Introductory phrases

Quotation marks

Using single quotation marks

The exclamation mark or exclamation point

The question mark

The colon

When to capitalise after a colon

The semicolon

The apostrophe

Making words plural using apostrophes

The hyphen

Dividing words at the end of a line

Using hyphens to create compound numbers

Using hyphens to avoid confusion

Using hyphens to join words together to form adjectival phrases

Using hyphens with prefixes

Using hyphens for position descriptions

The em and en dash

Parentheses

Brackets

The forward slash

To indicate choice between multiple options

For dates

Fractions

The ellipsis or dot dot dot

The em and en dash

The dash is not the same as the hyphen. They are both horizontal lines, but the dash is twice as long as the hyphen. And they have different roles to play in a sentence. There are actually two types of dashes - the ‘em’ dash, and the ‘en’ dash.

One of the main uses of the em dash is to separate parenthetical parts (parts that can be removed without losing the sentence’s basic meaning) of a sentence from the main part:

The ship - passengers, crew, pets, food, even the band - sank swiftly to the ocean’s depths.

Parenthetical elements can also be separated from the rest of the sentence using commas. So when do we use commas and when do we use dashes? Well, when the parenthetical element is complex and has its own punctuation, such as commas or phrases, use a dash; otherwise, use a hyphen.

You can use the em dash in a script to show a sudden change of thought:

BENNY: OK, let’s go to the - did you lock the back door?

The en dash is supposed to be in between the length of a hyphen and an em dash. However, in many font styles, it is impossible to tell the difference between the en and em dashes - they appear to be the same length. Use the en dash when you’re indicating a ‘to’ relationship between two things:

The meeting runs 9 am - 11 am.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Parentheses