How To Use Dashes In Legal Writing

Dashes can also be used to set off a clause parenthetical expression or list.

How to use dashes in legal writing. Use em dashes to highlight information or give emphasis to matter that is independent of the main sentence. You can use a colon to connect two sentences when the second sentence summarizes sharpens or explains the first. The em dash puts a nice pause in the text and it is un der used in pro fes sional writing. His neighbor with whom he had had several serious disagreements removed a section of the fence. Its principal use is as an equivalent of to when marking a span or range of dates page numbers scores and the like.

At some point between 1680 and 2016 i pinpoint it in 1996 nefarious forces took over in legal writing. The em dash is used to make a break be tween parts of a sen tence. Both sentences should be complete and their content should be very closely related. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. To make an em dash in microsoft word use the shortcut alt0151 or click insert click symbols on the far right select more symbols special characters and em dash.

Note that if you use colons this way too often it can break up the flow of your writing. Today brackets and parentheses are misused often enough to make any sensible reader. The en dash is shorter than an em dash and longer than a hyphen. Simplify your life by assigning a shortcut key to the em dash and any other symbols that you use frequently. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom.

Here are the basics. You could use commas here instead but dashes change the emphasis b. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Our clients singh lafrance and ivanoff have sent us the documents we requested. It never takes a space before or after the mark.