Thanks to those who responded to my question. That helps! Don ----- Original Message ----- From: Jean Menzies To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 2:31 PM Subject: [duxuser] Re: m-dashes and n-dashes It's a visual thing related to typography. In a proportional font like Times New Roman which is the default font in Word, the program automatically knows how much space to leave between letters of different sizes. In other words, the print letter I takes up less room than a W. Proportional fonts like this are also well-suited to using proper typographical punctuation similar to what you would see in a book. An em-dash is basically two dashes joined together to make one solid line instead of 2 side-by-side dashes like what we see in braille or what you may have used back in the typewriter days. An en-dash is like a single dash but is slightly wider than a normal dash. It's used in plases like when you express a date range as in 1999 - 2003. The dash here might typically be an en-dash. But I gather these don't translate with DBT, so you need to replace them with the conventional dashes. Hope that helps. Jean . ----- Original Message ----- From: dhansen@xxxxxxx To: Duxbury support Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 1:23 PM Subject: [duxuser] m-dashes and n-dashes Can anyone enlighten me on m-dashes and n-dashes? What is their purpose as opposed to an ordinary dash? Thanks Don