Know your type, part 1—dashes

In the digital age, we’re always quickly typing and sending off texts, emails, and reports but pay little attention to the proper use and role of typography and grammar. When the typewriter was invented, many of the traditional typographic symbols were left off the keyboard to save space. This eventually translated to the modern keyboards we all use every day. As a result, many of us default to what’s directly in front of us on the keyboard and don’t give a second thought to whether we’re correctly using those punctuation marks. Below are some quick examples of how to correctly use all the different types of dashes.

use in place of versus

shows a range

link points on a travel route

attribution of a quote

use without spaces to create a pause

use to set numbers

use in place of a hyphen or minus sign (it’s a holdover from typewriters)