Hyphens (-) vs. Em dashes ( — )

Hyphens and em dashes — what’s the difference?

Hyphens combine compound words or two-word adjectives before nouns

Example 1: We work in a dog-friendly office.

Example 2: Giving Mila carrots is a good long-term strategy for befriending her.

Note: you don’t hyphenate two-word adjectives that come after the noun.

Example: Our office is dog friendly.

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Em dashes create a pause in a sentence

Example: Theo and Mila — the two dogs in our office — love to eat carrots.

Pro tip! Easy way to insert an em dash on a Mac: Option + Shift + Hyphen

Whether or not you use spaces around your em dashes (word — word or word — word) is a matter of style. Whichever style you choose, use it consistently throughout your document.

When writing this post, we referenced this blog post by our client, Grammarly.