If there’s a really common error I see in the writing I edit, it’s people not knowing the difference between a hypen, an em-dash, and an en-dash. One thing to remember: do not put a space before or after either of them. (unless you’re doing a hard return from one line to another. Here’s a brief explanation of each:

A Hyphen is the short horizontal line that you use to separate compound words like twenty-seven or all-important.

The Em Dash is the longest of the three lines that is commonly used to separate a sentence. For example, I loved reading all the VA books[emdash]but Entrepreneurial Freedom was my favorite.

The En Dash is longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash. The en dash means “through”, so if you were to write: Read chapter one, sections 1[endash]12; pages 5[endash]42.

If you have any questions, please email me for a free example of these in word. WordPress is not allowing me to give you any visual examples with the exception of the hyphen.