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em dash

American  

noun

Printing.
  1. a dash one em long.


em dash British  

noun

  1. printing a dash (—) one em long

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Example Sentences

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See Examples For:

And he admits it, naturally, with an em dash.

From The Wall Street Journal Nov. 20, 2025

Along with the now-infamous em dash, many are renouncing words for which ChatGPT is known to have a mysterious penchant, such as delve, nestled, boast, and meticulous.

From Slate Aug. 20, 2025

It’s not as though the em dash is the first punctuation mark to get lost in intergenerational translation.

From Salon Jun. 11, 2025

She also mentioned a more urgent priority, that her “birthdate be followed in the biographical index by an em dash, and then a blank space.”

From Seattle Times Oct. 25, 2022

Opening quotation marks added after em dash in ...said he--'The Scarlet Letter.'...

From Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses by Cozzens, Frederic S.

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