Believe it or not, the mark that looks like two dashes/hyphens put together has a particular name: the em dash. This is not to be confused with the en dash, which is narrower and used for different purposes. The em dash can be used in place of commas, in instances like, “When she got the flowers— almost three weeks after her date—she had already made up her mind that she no longer wished to date him.” It can also be used in place of parentheses, but it is considered to be less formal and more intrusive. For added emphasis, the em dash is also used to replace a colon. Most word processors form the em dash when you type two hyphens in a row.
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