Em Dash

The Em Dash at U+2014 is a long horizontal punctuation mark used to create a strong break in a sentence. It belongs to the General Punctuation block and is wider and more forceful than a hyphen or en dash in ordinary typography. In English prose, it most often marks an interruption, aside, or abrupt turn of thought: “The answer—if there is one—will take time.” Writers also use it in dialogue to show a speaker being cut off: “I was only trying to—” In many publishing styles, em dashes are set without spaces in American English, while some house styles add spaces around them. It also appears in reference and editorial writing to replace repeated author names in bibliographies, to introduce an explanatory phrase, or to create a punchier alternative to parentheses, commas, or a colon. In plain-text communication it is often substituted with two hyphens when the real character is hard to type, but the em dash is the standard typographic form.