Hyphens, Dashes, and Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores

Business writers can make an especially polished impression by using hyphens and dashes correctly. This sentence shows advanced uses for both punctuation marks:

A study commissioned by HarperCollins in 2010 found that books bought for three- to seven-year-olds were frequently discovered at a local bookstore 38 percent of the time.

The dash before “38 percent” is perfect because it precedes some surprising information. The writer skillfully uses this dash to emphasize the news that adults are over five times likelier to buy e-books for themselves than for their kids.

Dashes call attention to the words they set off. (And parentheses downplay the information they contain.)

Click here for Write It Well’s guide to using hyphens correctly. And click here for our guide for typing dashes and hyphens correctly.

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two chapters on punctuation. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.