—

— U+2014, — EM DASH ← – General Punctuation ― →

• - (improper typesetting)
• --, ---, ---- (informal)

— (English name em dash)

1. Demarcates parenthetical thought. See — —.
   • 1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XV, in Sense and Sensibility , volume I, London: C Roworth, , and published by T Egerton, , →OCLC, pages 182–183:

     I have explained it to myself in the most satisfactory way;—but you, Elinor, who love to doubt where you can——It will not satisfy you I know; but you shall not talk me out of my trust in it.

     A small gap is visible in the double em dash.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:—.
2. Indicates a logical consequence.

   Synonym: :

   • 1962, Jack Frohlichstein, Mathematical Fun, Games and Puzzles (in English), Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 9:

     Bet anyone he can't correctly name the next highest number to every number which you will give him. […]
     43 — he will say 44
     87 — he will say 88
     123 — he will say 124

3. Indicates aposiopesis, an abrupt breaking-off in speech. See also … (“the ellipsis”).
4. Separates a term from its definition.
   • 2011, Adam Rizvi, Click Start to Begin: Windows XP Basics (in English), Click Start Publishing Ltd., →ISBN, page 22:

     Refresh — This will refresh the current folder, updating it with any new files or settings.

5. Indicates a lack of data in a table.^[1]
6. Alternative form of ― (“horizontal bar; quotation dash; introduces a line of dialogue”)
7. Used to censor letters in obscene words.
   • 1820, Cruikshank, All among the Hottentots capering to shore‎ (painting; in English):

     D—n the Devil .. he be going to eat me!!! — Rot me if he ain't as bloody minded as a Manchester butcher! Oh! dear! Oh! dear!! D—n your outlandish jaws!!

   D—n. [Damn] F—k. [Fuck]

   Synonym: ⸺

8. (dated, fiction) Used to replace part or all of a person's name, a place name, a date, or so forth.
   • 1748, a Lady, in a Letter to her Friend in the Country, A Free Comment on the Late Mr. W—g—n’s Apology for His Conduct; Which Clears Up the Obscurities of That Celebrated Posthumous Work, and Dissipates the Clouds in Which the Author Has Thought Proper to Envelope His Meaning (in English), London: W. Webb, page 15:

     I hope D—ds—y will look to theſe literal Errors, he being the only one of the Trade I can venture to truſt.

   Synonyms: ⸺, ⸻

9. Used as a ditto mark in lists or tables to indicate a repetition of appropriate content above.

   Synonym: —〃—

   Coordinate term: 〃

   • 1950, United States Census, New York, page listing Frank Valasky of New York City:

     Valasky, Frank

     —, Edna M

10. (music) A pointing mark in Anglican chant, used as a placeholder in the text to indicate that a bar of the chant should be omitted; typically used when a verse or half-verse is very short.

    Coordinate terms: |, ', :, *, ·, ‖, †

• — —

• ⸺ (two-em dash)
• ⸻ (three-em dash)

Punctuation

—

1. (stenoscript) Abbreviation of the.

—

1. (stenoscript) The letter sequence ⟨th⟩.
2. (stenoscript) The sound sequences /(V)nd/, /(V)nt/
3. (stenoscript) The suffixes or sequences mand, mend, mond, and -ment.

   a— — [amendment]

(letter sequense ⟨th⟩):

• (stenoscript) The dash may be written low, along the baseline, or high, at x-height, as convenient for whichever letters it links to. For example, with mo—n for 'more than', the dash is likely to be written at x-height.
• (stenoscript) When used as punctuation, an en or em dash is doubled, like a long ⹀, to distinguish it from its phonetic use.

Russian Wikipedia has an article on:

тире

Wikipedia ^ru

—

1. Indicates zero (omission) of the present tense of быть (bytʹ).

   Вре́мя — де́ньги.

   Vrémja — dénʹgi.

   Time is money.

2. Used in — —.
3. Replaces ‐ in some appositions, where hyphen would be used to connect the appositive word and the word in apposition if neither of them were a phrase.

   Не́которые госуда́рства — чле́ны ЕС препя́тствуют размеще́нию бе́женцев на свое́й террито́рии.

   Nékotoryje gosudárstva — člény JeS prepjátstvujut razmeščéniju béžencev na svojéj territórii.

   Some EU member states prevent placement of refugees on their territory.

1. ⟨—⟩ is not used when the subject is a pronoun; e.g. я ру́сский (ja rússkij, “I am Russian”) or with predicative adjectives.
2. ⟨— —⟩ is preferred over parentheses when the supplemental information is necessary to understand the writer's point and cannot be dropped.
3. A dash or a hyphen is used in Russian apposition when the first word (or first words) is not a form of address (e.g. товарищ (tovarišč)) and the second word is an appellative.