—

• - (improper typesetting)
• --, ---, ---- (informal)

— (English name em dash) (Alt + 0151)

1. Demarcates parenthetical thought. See — —.
2. Indicates a logical consequence. See also ' (“the colon”).
   • 1962, Jack Frohlichstein, Mathematical Fun, Games and Puzzles (in English), Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 9:

     Bet anyone he can't correctly name the next highest number to every number which you will give him. […]

     43 — he will say 44

     87 — he will say 88

     123 — he will say 124

3. Indicates aposiopesis, an abrupt breaking-off in speech. See also … (“the ellipsis”).
4. Separates a term from its definition.
   • 2011, Adam Rizvi, Click Start to Begin: Windows XP Basics (in English), Click Start Publishing Ltd., →ISBN, page 22:

     Refresh — This will refresh the current folder, updating it with any new files or settings.

5. Indicates a lack of data in a table.[1]
6. Alternative form of ― (“horizontal bar; quotation dash; introduces a line of dialogue”)
7. Used to censor letters in obscene words.

   D—n. [Damn] F—k. [Fuck]

8. (dated, fiction) Used to replace part or all of a person's name, a place name, a date, or so forth. [chiefly 19th century]
   • 1748, a Lady, in a Letter to her Friend in the Country, A Free Comment on the Late Mr. W—g—n’s Apology for His Conduct; Which Clears Up the Obscurities of That Celebrated Posthumous Work, and Dissipates the Clouds in Which the Author Has Thought Proper to Envelope His Meaning (in English), London: […] W. Webb, page 15:

     I hope D—ds—y will look to theſe literal Errors, he being the only one of the Trade I can venture to truſt.

   • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VIII, in Pride and Prejudice, volume III (in English), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton […], →OCLC, page 152:

     It is Mr. Wickham’s intention to go into the regulars […] He has the promise of an ensigncy in General ———’s regiment, now quartered in the North.

   • 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “Major Major Major Major”, in Catch-22 […] (in English), New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 90:

     He was often tempted to join Major —— de Coverley, but pitching horseshoes all day long seemed almost as dull as signing 'Major Major Major' to official documents, and Major —— de Coverley's countenance was so forbidding that Major Major was in awe of approaching him.

For quotations using this term, see Citations:—.

• — —

• ⸺ (two-em dash)
• ⸻ (three-em dash)

Punctuation

—

1. (stenoscript) the letter sequence ⟨th⟩

   (see: —t that, —r their/there, —z these, —a they, —s this, —oz those)

2. (stenoscript) Abbreviation of the.
3. (stenoscript) the sound sequences /(V)nd/, /(V)nt/
4. (stenoscript) the suffixes or sequences mand, mend, mond, -ment

   (e.g. ⟨a— —⟩ amendment)

• (stenoscript) The dash may be written low, along the baseline, or high, at x-height, as convenient for whichever letters it links to. For example, with mo—n for 'more than', the dash is likely to be written at x-height.
• (stenoscript) When used as punctuation, an en or em dash is doubled, like a long ⹀, to distinguish it from its phonetic use.

—

1. Indicates zero (omission) of the present tense of быть (bytʹ). Called тире́ (tirɛ́) in Russian.

   Вре́мя — де́ньги.

   Vrémja — dénʹgi.

   Time is money.

2. Used in — —.
3. Replaces ‐ in some appositions, where hyphen would be used to connect the appositive word and the word in apposition if neither of them were a phrase.

   Не́которые госуда́рства — чле́ны ЕС препя́тствуют размеще́нию бе́женцев на свое́й террито́рии.

   Nékotoryje gosudárstva — člény JeS prepjátstvujut razmeščéniju béžencev na svojéj territórii.

   Some EU member states prevent placement of refugees on their territory.

1. — is not used when the subject is a pronoun; e.g. я ру́сский (ja rússkij, “I am Russian”) or with predicative adjectives.
2. — — are preferred over ( ) when the supplemental information is necessary to understand author's point and can't be dropped.
3. A dash or a hyphen is used in Russian apposition when the first word (or first words) is not a form of address (e.g. товарищ (tovarišč)) and the second word is an appellative.