The Skillful Quill: Royal Punctuation—or The Dashing Prince

If you already know what a dash is, chances are you use it with flourish. Not using this tool would be like having a Ferrari and leaving it in the garage or like having this little guy (to the left) at home and running for help yourself.

For those unfamiliar with this beautiful punctuation tool, let’s begin with what it is not: it isn’t a hyphen. Hyphens are half-dashes like the one I just typed and have the purpose of connecting necessary descriptors to their nouns like mother-in-law. If the word completely changes meaning without the words describing in, you need to use the hyphen. (Mother and mother-in-law are VERY different people, but that’s another story).