Quick Start Guide: Dashes and Colons

Welcome!

Welcome to the Learning Commons Quick Start Guide on dashes and colons!

Dashes and colons are essential to incorporate into your grammar toolkit. After this lesson, you will be prepared to use these punctuation marks to create more gripping, well-paced papers. 

This guide will explain:

  •       What dashes are and when to use them
  •       What colons are and how to use them

 

Let’s get started!

Course Information

Course Level: Beginner

Time to Complete: 15 mins

Perfect for: Students in WRTG100/101, ENGL103, or anyone who needs a refresher.

Guide Creator: Kieran Wear

Dashes 101

This video is a primer on what makes for both effective:

  • Em dashes
  • En dashes

In this mini-course we explore this in more detail:

  1. When to use em dashes
  2. When to use en dashes
  3. When to use colons

Additional Resources

These are great links to follow if you want to read more about dashes and colons (with some bonus about semicolons again):

Colons, Semicolons, and Dashes

Dashes

 

If you would like to talk any of this through then we look forward to talking to you. Book an appointment!

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