En Dash U+2013

The en dash (–) is a medium-length dash, roughly the width of the letter "N". It is longer than a hyphen, shorter than an em dash, and marks ranges, connections and complex compound modifiers. Use the "Copy En Dash" button above to copy – to your clipboard.

No standard keyboard has an en dash, so casual writing uses a hyphen. Professionally edited text (books, magazines, academic papers, newspapers) uses the en dash for every range. AI models train on that text, so en dashes show up far more often in AI output than in everyday writing.

When to Use an En Dash

• Numeric ranges. Between two numbers that mark a span: pages 1–10, scores of 85–92, ages 18–24. The dash reads as "to" or "through."
• Date ranges. 2020–2025, January–March, the 1990s–2000s. In formal writing a hyphen here is a typographic error.
• Connections and directions. Between two things that are joined or opposed: the Tokyo–Osaka train, a London–Paris flight, the Ali–Frazier fight, a north–south border.
• Compound modifiers with multi-word parts. When one part is already a multi-word phrase: post–World War II, pre–Civil Rights era, New York–based company.

En Dash vs Em Dash vs Hyphen

Quick Rules

• Joining two words? Use a hyphen: self-aware, well-being, twenty-one.
• Showing a range or connection? Use an en dash: pages 1–10, Monday–Friday, New York–London.
• Creating a pause or interruption in a sentence? Use an em dash: He arrived—finally—at midnight.
• Writing math? Use the minus sign (U+2212), not a hyphen.

Why AI Models Love En Dashes

As with em dashes, the cause is training data: editors apply "en dash for ranges," and models learn the rule. People type 2020-2025 with a hyphen because 2020–2025 takes Alt+0150, Option+Hyphen or autocorrect.

So an en dash in a casual blog post, GitHub README or Slack message hints that the text was AI-generated or heavily edited. It is a tell, not proof.

How to Type an En Dash

Style Guide Rules for En Dashes

• Chicago Manual of Style: En dash for ranges, no spaces on either side: 2020–2025.
• AP Style: No en dashes; AP uses hyphens for ranges. En dashes in news content mean it was not AP-styled or went through a typesetter.
• British style: Often uses spaced en dashes for sentence breaks where American style uses em dashes: word – word. AI models that mix style guides sometimes produce inconsistent dashes.
• Academic style (APA, MLA): APA uses en dashes for ranges. MLA uses en dashes in published work but accepts hyphens for ranges in student papers.

For a publication, follow its style guide. Otherwise, pick one rule and stay consistent.

When En Dashes Cause Problems

• Regex and validation. ^\d{4}-\d{4}$ expects a hyphen and rejects 2020–2025. Date ranges pasted from AI content often fail this way.
• CSV parsing. En dashes are valid UTF-8 but can trip up older parsers, ASCII-only systems or tools that expect a specific encoding.
• Search and matching. A search for "2020-2025" returns nothing when the stored value has an en dash.
• Command-line arguments. A command-line flag must start with a hyphen, not an en dash. Pasted commands with en dashes often fail silently.
• Code pasted from chat. AI-generated code can contain en dashes in comments and strings, and rich-text tools can turn hyphens into dashes.

Detecting En Dashes

Paste text into our Invisible Character Viewer on the homepage to see every en dash highlighted in context. In code:

// JavaScript: detect en dashestext.includes('\u2013')
// Replace en dashes with regular hyphenstext.replace(/\u2013/g, '-')
// Replace all dash-like characters with a single standard hyphentext.replace(/[\u2013\u2014\u2212]/g, '-')

# Python: detect and replaceif '\u2013' in text:    text = text.replace('\u2013', '-')

The Dash Family in Unicode

Most writers only need three: hyphen, en dash and em dash.