	Site Map \| FAQ in Daily Almanac for Nov 9, 2009 Search White Pages
Skip Navigation Home American Indian Heritage Month Atlas Encyclopedia Dictionary Thesaurus Features Quizzes Timelines Countries Slideshows

Fact Monster Kid's reference,
games, quizzes

Editor's Favorites

Arts and Entertainment > Writing & Language > A Concise Guide to Grammar and Style > Punctuation

Dashes & Hyphens

Use a dash to indicate a sudden break in continuity or to set off an explanatory, a defining, or an emphatic phrase:
The sky grew dark—where were the kids?
Dairy foods—milk, cheese, yogurt—are a good source of calcium.
Use a hyphen to join the elements of a compound word or to join the elements of a compound modifier before a noun:

well-wisher	ice-skating rink
fifty-three	college-age students

Use a hyphen to divide a word at the end of a line:
Rasputin is one of history's most enig-
matic and intriguing figures.

See also: The Dash and the Hyphen and the Ellipsis

Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Brackets & Parentheses

Premium Partner Content

HighBeam Research

Related content from HighBeam Research on: Dashes & Hyphens

Power punctuation: the hyphen and the dash: use these two punctuation marks to energize your writing.(Troubleshooters) (Writing!)

Hyphens hit the road: dictionary does away with 16,000 dashes.(Brief article) (WR News, Senior Edition (including Science Spin))

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly)

Quick Tips: tips, tricks, and shortcuts.(News Briefs) (Macworld)

Technical Style (Chemical Engineering Progress)

Pick the Right Domain Name to Spell Success.(Shoet Sales) (Broker Magazine)

Inexpensive software reads printed material. (optical-character-recognition systems) (EDN)

OEMs Fight for a Standard.(Original Equipment Manufacturers)(Industry Overview)(Statistical Data Included) (Dealerscope: The Business of CE Retailing)

Answering refrigeration questions.(refrigeration zone) (Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News)

Modern Language Association. MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing.(Book review) (Style)

Additional search results provided by HighBeam Research, LLC. © Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.

Infoplease Tools