Q. "A record 6.1million people are now on the waiting list for routine procedures like hip and knee replacements — but this is likely to spiral for several years." When do we use this "—" punctuation as used here? What is it called?
Doctor Answer is medically reviewed by SecondMedic medical review team.
The punctuation used in the sentence you provided is called an en dash. An en dash is a type of Dash that typically replaces hyphen(-). It's longer than a hyphen, and its primary purpose is to connect words together for clarity.
En dashes are particularly useful for denoting ranges when there are two separate numbers or dates involved. They’re also often used to provide a more natural flow when one needs to replace several words with just a single word. For example, 'New York City–Los Angeles' instead of ‘New York City and Los Angeles'.
En dashes can also be found in applications such as subtraction problems, where they denote what to subtract from what (i.e 5 - 3 = 2) or in equations (i.e 2b – 4ac > 0). In general, en dashes are meant for use whenever precision and clarity are essential elements needed in communication – especially when it comes to mathematics or scientific writing/research fields where every detail matters tremendously!
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