Dash

This lesson is on the dash.

dashes can be used in place of brackets.

In place of commas or in place of colons but the use of the dashes is really considered to be informal.

So if you are writing a formal text you will use the brackets the commas and the colons for writing informal text.

You can replace them all with a dash as we’ll see and in England and America have different rules about spacing so if we want to replace a bracket with a dash we do it like this our new neighbor bracket Fred Brown close bracket is a policeman or our new neighbor Fred Brown is a policeman.

It doesn’t really change the way we say it it just changes the way we write it he probably thinks she’s friendly she’s not or with a dash you probably think she’s friendly she’s not we can replace commas with it.

My cousin who lives in Manchester is pregnant again.

Or my cousin who lives in Manchester is pregnant again and we’re replacing the commerce here with a dash and again Suzy’s mother who is a critic of the school board spoke up or we just replaced the commas with a dash.

We end up with the same spoken sentence or dashes can replace colons so with a colon we would say a BLT sandwich only has three ingredients bacon lettuce and tomato or we write it like this a BLT sandwich only has three ingredients bacon lettuce tomato and again it doesn’t change the way we speak the sentence just changes the way we write it since the appearance of it or a very famous quote.

Only two things are certain in life death and taxes or we replace the code on with a dash we write it like this.

UK and US have different rules about spacing the UK writers put a space around the dash and US writers don’t so the UK would write.

That’s what I said to him.

Don’t waste your money on that junk and there’s a space between around the dash in US they wouldn’t put the space around it they’d just write it word on word.

I personally don’t like this because it makes confusing a dash and a hyphen too difficult it’s not easy to see at a glance is a dash or is a hyphen.

That’s why I personally prefer to put a space around a dash so it’s clear it’s not a hyphen.