<p>when do you use the dash symbol?</p>
<p>like in a sentence there is a dash. For example</p>
<p>Ashlee Simpson appeared on the July cover of Marie Claire magazine extolling the virtues of appreciating one’s body as it is — then she had a nose job. </p>
<p>How and when do you use this symbol?</p>
<p>U could use it like this:</p>
<p>THe monkey-very small but smart-ate the ice cream.</p>
<p>Althought that means nothing, the point is that it is used for an appositive.</p>
<p>I don't get it</p>
<p>As in:</p>
<p>The president, who is a moron, vetoed the stem cell bill.</p>
<p>JUST REPLACE the commas with dashes and make it</p>
<p>The president-a moron-vetoed the stem cell bill.</p>
<p>I use it to add emphasis. I think in your example, it would be:</p>
<p>Ashlee Simpson appeared on the July cover of Marie Claire magazine extolling the virtues of appreciating one’s body as it is -- she had a nose job a week later.</p>
<p>Or something like that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.</p>
<p>I copied that statement from nytimes</p>
<p>haha I guess dashes can be used in myriads of ways but I primarily use it for emphasis (at the end) but it also works as an appositive as guardiandevil said. It's a very versatile device.</p>
<p>OK. First of all, there are different kinds of dashes. The examples given use the emdash, which is a longer dash. It can be made of two hyphens when the emdash character is unavailable. It is used for appositives or to indicate a break in thought the same way you might use commas or parentheses. Commas give the appositive pretty much equal weight as the rest of the sentence; parentheses give it less weight or emphasis; and emdashes give it more weight. Use emdashes to indicate an abrupt break or to strongly emphasize something.</p>
<p>I am not sure that the original example uses it correctly; a period would have more effectively provided the desired emphasis anyway.</p>
<p>By the way, it should be used without spaces, like this: "as it is—then she had a nose job."</p>