Dashes are poor substitutes for words

Posted by June on October 6, 2026
LABELS: DASHES IN RANGES, EDITING, GRAMMAR, hyphens

Little grammar and usage issues that drive other people nuts don’t bother me. That’s because a lot of the “errors” that annoy a lot of people are superstitions – stuff like how you supposedly can’t use “like” to mean “such as” or how you supposedly can’t begin a sentence with the word “and.” Not true and not true.

A lot of real errors don’t bother me, either, because I know how hard it is to avoid every grammar, punctuation and usage pitfall in the world. So when I see “chomping at the bit” in place of the more accurate “champing at the bit,” it doesn’t bug me.

But that doesn’t mean I'm immune to petty feelings about other people's writing. It's just that my copy editing experience channels my peevishness toward other things — weird little issues that almost no one else would object to.

Like, for example, a dash or hyphen used as a word — specifically the word “to,” “through” or “until.”

Class is 1-3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. The camp is for children 5-9.

I hate that.

My reasons aren’t great. The most forgivable reason is I have to change these when I edit. In Associated Press style, you’re supposed to use actual English words in these constructions. “Class is 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.” “The camp is for children 5 through 9.”

This is a style thing. Technically, it’s not wrong to use punctuation here. But in running text, I think it’s awful. When you read, your brain expects to see words. Symbols throw off your flow of information processing.

That’s why I think the Chicago Manual’s style of writing out a lot of numbers can make writing more digestible than it would be with numerals. Compare “There were plenty of people at the concert, at least fifty of whom were passed out on the ground” to “There were plenty of people at the concert, at least 50 of whom were passed out on the ground.”

My two cents is that, when you’re reading, words flow and things that aren’t words break that flow.

In graphic elements like information boxes, dashes and hyphens in ranges or time spans are just fine. But in complete sentences, I think words are the better choice.