Are your young learners comfortable using apostrophes, commas, and hyphens? Even native speakers of English need a little help with punctuation from time to time. In honor of National Punctuation Day (September 24, 2015) the editor for Sprout English and ESL Library has collected all our past punctuation posts into one handy reference list. (more…)
em dash
Using the En Dash Correctly
Happy National Punctuation Day! This quirky holiday is celebrated on September 24th primarily in the United States, but is also gaining recognition in other countries, especially Canada. At Sprout English, we decided to do a blog post in honor of this holiday about…wait for it…punctuation!
I wanted to choose a punctuation mark that was difficult for English learners and native English speakers alike. Two things came to mind, based on my many years of teaching, and, more recently, editing: the en dash and the em dash! What are they? How did they get their names? When do we use them? I’ll blog about the en dash here on our Sprout English blog, and I’ll blog about the em dash over on our sister-site’s blog, ESL-Library. I hope these posts will be informative for you and your students!
What is an en dash?
An en dash is an elongated hyphen (about the length of two hyphens) that is used for specific purposes.
Here’s how the dash family looks:
