Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and in a recent Grammar Minute episode, I talked about the difference between em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens. But I haven’t yet explained what those are. So let’s start with em dashes.
An em dash is a long dash setting off a clause that interrupts the sentence. These clauses are often explanatory or in need of special emphasis. For example, if you say: “The paddleboards on the beach—not the blue ones, but the yellow ones—are ready to go in the water,” then the middle clause in that sentence, “not the blue ones, but the yellow ones” can be grammatically separated from the rest of the sentence with em dashes.
Em dashes are a closed punctuation mark, meaning that there’s no space before or after them. At least, that’s true for American English.
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