Welcome!
Welcome to the Learning Commons Quick Start Guide on dashes and colons!
Dashes and colons are essential to incorporate into your grammar toolkit. After this lesson, you will be prepared to use these punctuation marks to create more gripping, well-paced papers.
Difficulty with navigating the correct use of colons and semicolons is a common experience in Academic Writing. Many people struggle to identify when and when not to use colons and semicolons. If you are struggling, know that you are in good company!
This guide will explain:
- What dashes are and when to use them
- What colons are and how to use them
Let’s get started!
Course Information
Course Level: Beginner
Time to Complete: 15 mins
Perfect for: Students in WRTG100/101, ENGL103, or anyone who needs a refresher.
Guide Creator: Kieran Wear
Additional resources
Below are some great links to follow if you want to read more on commas:
Links to handouts:
Dashes 101
This video is a primer on what makes for both effective:
- Em dashes
- En dashes
In this mini-course we explore this in more detail:
- When to use em dashes
- When to use en dashes
Dashes
Dashes are small horizontal lines that float within sentences. Dashes function, like all punctuation, to change how the words in a sentence relate to one-another.
Unlike hyphens (the short line between “one” and “another” in the sentence above is a hyphen), dashes appear between whole words.
Em dashes (the length of the dash is as long as an “m”) are used as a way of separating clauses.
Em dashes have several uses, but they all work to separate out a clause. They can:
Emphasize a point.
Em dashes emphatically (that is, forcefully) separate parts of a sentence, giving more energy to a sentence than almost any other punctuation.
Examples:
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, uninteresting as it may seem, changed the English language.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—uninteresting as it may seem—changed the English language.
In the above example, the clause “uninteresting as it may seem” is more emphatically stressed when em dashes are applied, and thus the pacing of the sentence becomes a bit quicker.
Show an introduction or a conclusion.
Em dashes can emphasize information at the end or beginning of a sentence as well as within it.
Examples:
There is one aspect of Chaucer’s work that ought to make modern readers aghast—antisemitism.
Chaucer has been called the father of English literature—an oft used, if not wholly accurate title.
Emphasize a modifier.
There are many ways that em dashes can be used for emphasis, and we do not want to get bogged down in the possibilities, but one last common example can be found in emphasizing a modifier.
Example:
The Pardoner’s—frightening and bloody—tale is a moral “exemplum” meant to lead listeners to a moral conclusion.
Em dashes have several uses, but a good rule of thumb is to remember that they can replace other punctuation in a sentence, most often when that punctuation would otherwise be awkward. Commas, parentheses, and colons can all potentially be replaced by an em dash—usually with the result of a more emphatic clause.
En dashes (whose lengths are the same as an “n”) are half the size of an em dash and slightly larger than a hyphen. Unlike em dashes, en dashes have quite specific times in which they may be used, and do not stand in for other punctuation.
Date and number ranges.
Standing in for the words “to,” “through,” “including,” and “up to” (but “to” more than anything else), en dashes are often used in showing ranges of numbers and portraying the movement of time.
Examples:
Living circa 1340–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer did much in his 60 years to impact the next 600 years of English literature.
“I’ve read The Canterbury Tales 10–12 times” Katie bragged to Dr. Green, luxuriating in a sparkle in the professor’s eyes that she mistook to be awe.
If the first example had included the word “from” before the first date, it would not have needed an en dash, but would have rather read as “living from circa 1340 to 1400…” Thus, any time you introduce your numbers (And dates, in particular) with the word “from,” maintain the “to” that the en dash is replacing.
Likewise, if the second example had introduced the scale with the word “between,” the en dash would have to be replaced with “and,” making the sentence “I’ve read The Canterbury Tales between 10 and 12 times…” So, when ranges are introduced with the word “between,” ensure that you do not use an en dash.
Movement and scores.
Still standing in for the word “to,” en dashes can also be used to indicate things like athletic scores and travel.
Examples:
Finishing with a final score of 3–10, my quiz team certainly learned the hard way what Katie McDonald had meant when she said that she knew Chaucer “better than all of you plebeians.”
The London-Canterbury route, although an easy drive today, was no little journey in the 14th century when pilgrims often made the trip on foot.
Complex compound adjectives.
Our final use for en dashes is found in simplifying sets of compound adjectives. Compound adjectives are simply those adjectives that contain multiple words, often with a hyphen. A “brightly-lit” room, or a “high school” sophomore. The need for an en dash arises when two of these compound adjectives are in use at once. (Please note that most academic style guides prefer the use of as few hyphens as needed, and as clear of language as possible so it is the rare sentence that will need to deal with multiple compound adjectives at once.)
Example:
We know that in the post–Middle English era of today, films and books contain plotlines that are ripped from earlier stories, but what we rarely realize is that there is a long history of this kind of “plot stealing,” extending all the way back to Shakespeare and Chaucer.
Because “Middle English” is a compound noun (but operating like an adjective here, in that it describes “era”), the en dash helps make sense of and separate the “post” that is also working to describe “era.”
Your Turn: Test Your Understanding
That was a lot of information! Think you have a handle on it? Test yourself!
Colons
Seven Rules:
Rule #1 Series or List
Use a colon to start a series/list that is introduced by an independent clause.
Examples:
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote several of my favourite books: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Antichrist.
For many, Nietzsche is known for just two things: his atheism and his depression.
Rule #2 Consequence of an Action
Use a colon to introduce the effect or logical consequence of an action.
Examples:
Looking at the world around him, Nietzsche finds that he can come to only one conclusion: God is dead.
Nietzsche wanted to demonstrate, through his radical language, that European society had finally made one social force irrelevant: Christianity.
Rule #3 Quotation
Use a colon before a long quotation that is an independent clause. In MLA Format, the quote should be four or more lines long.
Examples:
Ever concerned with “will,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche writes:
Will—that is the name of the liberator and joy-bringer; thus I taught you, my friends. But now learn this too: the will itself is still a prisoner. Willing liberates; but what is it that puts even the liberator himself in fetters? “It was”—that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy (139).
Your Turn: Test Your Understanding!
Rule #4 Letter or Memo
Use a colon after the salutation in a business letter or memo.
Examples:
Dear Walter Kaufmann:
To the editorial board of The Journal of Nietzsche Studies:
Rule #5 Separating Chapter and Verse
Use a colon to separate the chapter and verse in religious scripture. Note that in MLA the correct punctuation for both religious scripture and plays is actually a period.
Examples:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra works against Genesis 1:1, presenting self-creation in place of what we might call “God-creation.”
Fargard 2:1 of the Zend-Avesta (the primary holy text of Zoroastrianism, from which Nietzsche lifts the character “Zarathustra”) proves to be an important read for the involved Nietzsche scholar.
Rule #6 Separating Hours and Minutes
Use a colon to separate hours from minutes when stating the time.
Examples:
I looked up at 2:30 in the morning and—shocked—put down my Ecce Homo, having finally realized that I really am a nerd.
Rule #7 Ratios
Use a colon to show a ratio.
Examples:
“Understanding Nietzsche is a matter of proportion,” explained Dr. Smith. “It’s a 3:1 ratio. Three parts reading and rereading his texts as broadly as you can, one part reveling in the audacity of it all.”
For the philosophy quiz we were split up into teams of 12:1. That is, 12 undergrad students for every postgrad.
Try a few more sentences
Wrap-up and self-check
Congratulations!
Now, return to the Learning Commons Resource Moodle and do the exit quiz to confirm your new knowledge!
Additonal Resources
These are great links to follow if you want to read more about dashes and colons (with some bonus about semicolons again):
If you would like to talk any of this through then we look forward to talking to you. Book an appointment!