What it is
A writer setting material off inside a sentence has three devices: a pair of dashes, a pair of round brackets, or a pair of commas. Choosing the dash raises two further questions that look like one: which mark of the family it is, and whether it takes a space on each side.
Its members are best named by number, because their shapes are the whole of what is at issue: the hyphen-minus at U+002D, the en dash at U+2013, the em dash at U+2014. Nothing in these languages settles which of them punctuates a sentence or how wide the gap around it is. This record therefore names every mark in words and by number and types none of them.
The marks between and after the items of a list belong to the enumeration record. What is left here is the dash inside running text and the bracket around an insertion.
Where the expectation comes from
House, because every rule that settles the choice is a named body's and could be revised without any orthography code changing. The instructive part is that the one code in play rules a different question.
- The English Style Guide of the Directorate-General for Translation gives the en dash the parenthetical work at 2.17: it may punctuate a sentence instead of commas or round brackets, increasing the contrast or emphasis of the text set off, and it advises against dashes in legislation. At 2.18 the em dash has an unrelated job: it serves as a bullet in lists.
- The spacing rule is not in that section but at 2.1, among the ways English punctuation differs from other languages: marks are always closed up to the preceding word, letter or number apart from dashes and ellipsis points. The dash is the named exception, so it takes a space on each side.
- Round brackets are governed at 2.19, at lower emphasis than paired commas, with a second set of round brackets rather than square ones inside the first.
- German is code-governed here, and the code rules the function. The Amtliches Regelwerk puts the Gedankenstrich at § 77 of chapter E, where it marks a change of speaker, of theme, of expectation or of construction; the parenthetical use is the last of these, and there the dash is used in pairs. Its notes settle the joins, among them that a full stop before the closing dash is dropped. On spacing the code says nothing at all.
Consequences for translation
The conversion is determinate once the governing guide is known. What is not determinate is which authority has ruled the question in hand.
- Length and spacing are ruled by different bodies. The English guide fixes the spacing and leaves the choice of mark loose; the German code fixes what the mark does and says nothing about the gap around it. A rule taken from one and applied to the other answers a question that authority never asked.
- Converting a dash by width turns a parenthesis into a bullet. In this house style the parenthetical mark is the spaced en dash and the em dash is a list marker, so swapping the two moves the mark between functions rather than adjusting its appearance.
- The distinction is the first thing a source file loses. The Unicode Standard notes at U+002D that the character stands generically for a hyphen, a minus sign or an en dash, each of which has a dedicated alternative, so a source that wrote all three with it lost the difference before the translator saw it. Restoring it is a decision to record, not a copy to make.
- A deviation is a finding inside the commissioning body's work and a preference outside it, and the advice against dashes in legislation cuts across that: a dash punctuated correctly can still be wrong for the text type.
Examples
EN>NL
- Source: in the first indent
- Target: eerste streepje
- Comment: The Joint Practical Guide, 2015 edition, Guideline 15.4, in two language versions opened together. The table names the part of an article the dash introduces, and the two versions name it differently: the English by the result on the line, the Dutch by the mark producing it. A translator rendering "indent" by a word for indentation would have named the layout rather than the part.
EN>ES
- Source: in the first indent
- Target: el primer guion
- Comment: The same guideline in the Spanish version of the same instrument. Three official versions of one text designate one mark by three words, none a translation of another: two name the mark and one names what it does to the line. Reasoning from the shape gives the wrong word in two languages of three, so the designation is looked up in the target version rather than derived.
References
- Joint Practical Guide of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission for persons involved in the drafting of European Union legislation, second edition 2015. Guideline 15.4, the table of the parts of an article and the form of reference to each, English, Dutch and Spanish language versions.
- English Style Guide. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission, eighth edition January 2016, file consulted 21 November 2025. Sections 2.1 (the closing-up rule and its exceptions), 2.17 (Dashes), 2.18 (Long (or em) dashes) and 2.19 (Round brackets).
- Amtliches Regelwerk der deutschen Rechtschreibung, Regeln und Wörterverzeichnis. Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung, on the Council's decision of 15 December 2023, in force 1 July 2024. Chapter E (Zeichensetzung), section 6, § 77 with notes E1 to E4, read in the edition published by the Council's own secretariat at the Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache.
- The Unicode Standard, code charts version 17.0, read at unicode.org. C0 Controls and Basic Latin, U+0000 to U+007F, for U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS with its note; General Punctuation, U+2000 to U+206F, for U+2013 EN DASH and U+2014 EM DASH under the printed subhead Dashes.