I see this error all the time, and no wonder--it's not something your eye would naturally catch.
Unless, of course, you have doomed yourself to a lifetime of noticing punctuation faults, because you are an editor. (In which case, 화이팅!)
Here's the thing: sometimes we write out a span or range with words, like this:
"She was president of Punctuationland from 1987 to 1989."
But sometimes we write it out with just the numbers, like this:
"She was president of Punctuationland 1987–89."
or
"See the detailed topographical maps of Punctuationland, pp. 193–205."
The punctuation between those numbers looks a bit like a hyphen, but it's something else. Hyphens work to connect ideas that are very close together into one idea. But connecting and indicating a whole range of things? For that, we need to call in the big guns: the en dash.
An en dash is just a bit bigger than a hyphen. In fact, depending on the font you use, it's usually about the width of the letter n.
(An em dash is a bit bigger than that—here's one of them. In many fonts, an em dash is about the width of the letter m.)
You can find an en dash in MS Word under "symbols", but it's easy to assign it a shortcut. On my computer, I hold down Cntrl + hyphen to make an en dash, and Cntrl + Shft + hyphen to make an em dash. Once you get used to it, you can let that poor beleaguered little hyphen off the hook.
Unless, of course, you have doomed yourself to a lifetime of noticing punctuation faults, because you are an editor. (In which case, 화이팅!)
Here's the thing: sometimes we write out a span or range with words, like this:
"She was president of Punctuationland from 1987 to 1989."
But sometimes we write it out with just the numbers, like this:
"She was president of Punctuationland 1987–89."
or
"See the detailed topographical maps of Punctuationland, pp. 193–205."
The punctuation between those numbers looks a bit like a hyphen, but it's something else. Hyphens work to connect ideas that are very close together into one idea. But connecting and indicating a whole range of things? For that, we need to call in the big guns: the en dash.
An en dash is just a bit bigger than a hyphen. In fact, depending on the font you use, it's usually about the width of the letter n.
(An em dash is a bit bigger than that—here's one of them. In many fonts, an em dash is about the width of the letter m.)
You can find an en dash in MS Word under "symbols", but it's easy to assign it a shortcut. On my computer, I hold down Cntrl + hyphen to make an en dash, and Cntrl + Shft + hyphen to make an em dash. Once you get used to it, you can let that poor beleaguered little hyphen off the hook.
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