As someone who writes for a living, my collected years of knowledge have made me a bit of a stickler for grammar and punctuation. A couple weeks ago, I saw a YouTube video on one of my favorite used and misused pieces of punctuation — the dash, a.k.a. the thing that just proceeded this sentence segment.

In English, we have three main types of dashes: the hyphen (-), the en dash (–) and the em dash (—), and the one you’re most likely to see me use in the paper is the em dash. It’s basically the go-to substitute for a colon, semi-colon or parentheses in most situations.

For example, instead of writing, “She ran down the street (sweat pouring down her face) and the killer followed,” I would rather write, “She ran down the street — sweat pouring down her face — and the killer followed.”

With the en dash, you’ll most often use this to designate a period of time. For example, if someone is a military veteran, you might say, “He served in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1967,” but with an en dash, I would write, “He served in the U.S. Army, 1962–1967.”