Prose checks › Dashes Pro
Prose check: dashesWord—word, or word – word?
US publishers mostly close up an em dash; UK publishers often space an en dash. Falcontext finds the dashes set differently from the rest of your book.
In Falcontext’s Edit tab, Dashes is one part of Punctuation consistency, with dialogue quotes, curly or straight quotes and ellipses. Each part has its own light, and the worst sets the check’s.
Em dash or en dash: the common styles
- Closed em dash: word—word. Usual in the US.
- Spaced en dash: word – word. Usual in the UK.
Your book’s style is whichever it uses most. The others are flagged.
One exception
A range of numbers takes a closed en dash, whatever your style: pages 10–20. A hyphen there (10 - 20) is flagged.
How Falcontext checks each em dash and en dash
Guidelines, not rules. Em or en is taste. This just keeps your taste consistent.
- Finds
- Dashes between words set differently from the book’s usual style, and ranges of numbers set with a hyphen.
- Traffic light
- All the same
- 1–3
- 4 or more
- Fix
- Fix resets a dash to your book’s style; in the desktop app you’ll do it yourself.
Which dash is up to you. Keeping it the same is a job for the last pass of self-editing a novel, proofing.
Em or en: which side are you on?
Questions about dashes.
Should I use an em dash or an en dash in fiction?
Either style is right: closed em dashes are usual in the US, spaced en dashes in the UK. What matters is one style throughout.
Does Falcontext change my dashes?
Only when you click Fix, in the editors where Fix works. It changes a dash to your book’s own style.
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