Double En Dash or Em Dash?

Veradin said:

Perhaps this is a silly question, but as I have yet to come across any guides discussing this, I thought I would put the question to my new and talented friends here. When writing a manuscript, is it acceptable in any way to substitute a single em dash (—) for two en dashes (--)?

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Don't use either en- or em-dashes; let the typography/layout staff at your publisher decide that. You use hyphen - for an en-dash or double hyphen -- for an em-dash.

There are style issues regarding the use of both, and it's easier on everyone if mss. just use hyphens unless a specific editor for a specific publisher tells you otherwise.

in manuscript format just use two hyphens for emdash, the typesetter will know what to do

This might help:

The correct use of em and en
The em dash (—) is used to indicate a sudden break in thought (“I was thinking about writing a—what time did you say the movie started?”), a parenthetical statement that deserves more attention than parentheses indicate, or instead of a colon or semicolon to link clauses. It is also used to indicate an open range, such as from a given date with no end yet (as in “Peter Sheerin [1969—] authored this document.”), or vague dates (as a stand-in for the last two digits of a four-digit year).

Two adjacent em dashes (a 2-em dash) are used to indicate missing letters in a word (“I just don’t f——ing care about 3.0 browsers”).

Three adjacent em dashes (a 3-em dash) are used to substitute for the author’s name when a repeated series of works are presented in a bibliography, as well as to indicate an entire missing word in the text.



The en dash (–) is used to indicate a range of just about anything with numbers, including dates, numbers, game scores, and pages in any sort of document.

It is also used instead of the word “to” or a hyphen to indicate a connection between things, including geographic references (like the Mason–Dixon Line) and routes (such as the New York–Boston commuter train).

Read on here: http://alistapart.com/articles/emen/

The thing I do--because I use a typewriter and not a computer for most of my writing--is two hyphens for an em-dash. The reason for this is that most typewriters do not have an em-dash feature.

Also, I've noticed that to get an em-dash on many word-processing programs, the user is required to do separate formatting to get the em-dashes done. This could be a problem if you're electronically submitting.

So I would definitely just use two hyphens instead of an em-dash. Like others have pointed out, the typesetter will know what to do from there.

I use two hyphens, and Word turns them into an em dash.

Bufty said:

I use two hyphens, and Word turns them into an em dash.

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You can turn off that feature, and it's a simple matter to find and replace, going back and forth between double dashes and em-dashes. The em-dash of the Courier font doesn't look much different from a dash, so for submitting in Courier I use the double dash. For TNR, the em-dash looks more refined.

You can turn off Word's automatic substituitions, and you should.

Word will do stupid things, particularly if you have a quotation mark with a leading or trailing em-dash. Word will use the wrong quotation mark. It will also make errors with single quotation marks/apostrophes used to indicate elision and syncope, or with 'tis or in dates.

If you use smart quotes and em-dashes and en-dashes, you're going to annoy the typesetter who will have to check them individually.

These character's are "high ASCII", that is, they are not the same on computer to computer, and, depending on the typeface used for your text, they are not the same in all typefaces.

Seriously, unless your editor tells you otherwise, don't use them.