Teaching grammar basics: Using brackets, hyphens, dashes and slashes

Hyphens are a quiet type of punctuation that appear in the middle of words. These words are called “compound modifiers” and function in the same way as an adjective:

• A pet-friendly flat.
• A one-in-a-million deal.
• A hard-as-nails question.

These hyphens only appear when these phrases are used in the place of an adjective. If you move these phrases to the end of a sentence, the hyphens are lost:

• This flat is pet friendly.
• This question is hard as nails!

The hyphen also appears in some compound words, such as “father-in-law” or “twelve-year-old”.

In some novels, you may also see hyphens at the end of lines. This is to indicate the break of a word which could not fit on the first line and is finished on the next. This is seen most often in printed texts, so you are not likely to see it written by hand!

Dashes, when you first see them, seem to be the same as a hyphen. However, the line is slightly longer, and the dash has a much different use in a sentence. The dash is most seen when making a parenthetical statement. Let’s take a sentence from earlier:

• His favourite team, whom he has loved since he was young, just won the championship!

We know where the parenthetical clause is, as the commas have highlighted it. We can use dashes to convey the same meaning:

His favourite team – whom he has loved since he was young – just won the championship!

A writer can choose either of these types of punctuation to convey the parenthetical clause, though the dash is favoured if the clause appears at the end of a sentence. The dash can also be used to in the same way as colons:

• I love playing football – I can always score against my brother!
• Sour apples would be my favourite kind of sweet – if we ran out of chocolate!

Although the dash functions the same way as a colon, it provides a different tone – unlike the colon in a formal sentence, a dash sounds slightly more informal.

The slash is a slightly more modern type of punctuation. Formerly called the stroke, it has since gained popularity for its use in computing and appears most frequently when writing online. Sentences using the slash are comparing or conflating two things:

• He works in his living room/office.
• Dear Sir/Madam.
• Timothy will eat pasta and/or pizza.

In the first two examples, the slash takes the place of the word “or”. This is also the case in the third example, though the phrase is slightly more complicated when expanded out:

• Timothy will eat pasta, or pizza, or pasta and pizza.

The slash is most commonly used when writing informally, or when writing a shortened version of a statement.

As we have explored so far, some types of punctuation are used to represent parenthetical clauses, which are not essential to the meaning of a sentence. The bracket is the most common punctuation used to show parenthesis:

Brackets (parentheses) are used to show extra information.

• Sam (my brother) wanted to see the movie before me.
• The lane at the back (which I was scared to walk down) was the only way to my friend’s house.

Usually brackets are part of a larger sentence, which means full stops should be outside of the punctuation:

• I went on a walk yesterday (even though it was raining).

In rare cases, the brackets can form a sentence on its own in relation to another. In these instances, which usually reveal the voice of a writer in a text, the full stop appears within the bracketed sentence:

• After a week on set, the actor decided that he no longer wanted to work on the film. (And who could blame him? If he couldn’t do it, nobody could.)

A bracket is a nice touch to add to a piece of writing, but you don’t want to use them too much. In certain texts, adding a bracket here or there (like here!) can help to set the tone and add additional information without confusing the reader.

But avoiding confusing the reader is the crucial part to remember when teaching brackets. Ultimately, grammar techniques are used and taught for the sole purpose of making a piece of text simpler to read. Grammar informs the way we break apart information and make it digestible on the page. Too many brackets disrupts the flow of a sentence, confusing the reader.

As well as this, brackets (versus using dashes for the same purpose) are often used in pieces of writing with a more informal tone. This is not always the case, and many pieces of academic writing use brackets also, but brackets are increasingly common in more casual tones of writing. For this reason, it’s important to include the effects of using brackets in your instruction of them, reminding your learners that the punctuation they choose has an effect on the overall tone of the piece.

A simpler mistake your learners can make when using brackets is forgetting to close them. Sometimes, the length of text within a bracket is long enough that by the time you have come to the end, you’ve forgotten about the bracket completely. Correcting this mistake links to explicit instruction on planning and proofreading: remind learners that editing their work should be a regular part of their process, and that this includes ensuring all brackets are neatly opened and closed (and not too frequent!)

Why is a four-year-old baby four years old? Why does a red-soled shoe have red soles?

A common mistake when using hyphens, especially in phrasal adjectives, is mixing up when and when not to use them. For example:

• A kids-only birthday party is held for kids only.
• A seven-week-long expedition to Timbuktu is seven weeks long.

Phrasal adjectives, which come before the noun, are hyphenated, while the descriptors that follow are not.

The only exception to this rule is when the phrase in front of the noun includes an adverb:

• The quickly moving queue was moving quickly.

If the queue were quick moving, it would be a quick-moving queue, but with an adverb present in the sentence, there is no hyphen needed.

To reinforce this, practise flipping phrasal adjectives before and after the verb and observing how the hyphen appears and disappears. Once learners are confident, intersperse the phrases with adverbs to see if they can recognise that a hyphen is not needed.

Another common error is hyphenating prefixes. When we write a prefix on paper, we display it as un- or re- or in-, but when attached to a word, these prefixes do not have hyphens - this can cause some misconceptions.

While it’s important to teach the roots and affixes of words explicitly, boosting learners’ understanding of word construction, it’s equally important to address misconceptions such as hyphenating prefixes.

To reinforce this, take common words like “understand” and “redo”, words learners might have acquired incidentally, and use them to show that while there is a prefix present, no hyphen is needed. More common words can form scaffolds for complex vocabulary further down the line.

A dash and a hyphen: both tiny little lines on the page, but with different meanings. For this reason, it’s easy for learners to get dashes and hyphens confused.

For a refresher, hyphens are used to connect words together, forming links between them and making new meanings. Dashes, on the other hand, are used similarly to brackets, separating independent clauses and representing a break in the structure of a sentence.

Learners can sometimes tell the difference between hyphens and dashes by observing their length - hyphens are sometimes short, while dashes are longer.

However, in some pieces of writing and some fonts, dashes are shown as the same length as hyphens, so length alone cannot be the only factor learners use to differentiate between them. Instead, learners should observe the spaces around the dash or hyphen. Hyphens rest immediately next to the two words they are connecting:

• Tiva had a black-spotted dog.

On the other hand, dashes have a space before and after.

• Frances wanted to go on holiday - she’d wanted to go for a long time, actually - but she was scared of flying in a plane.

On rare occasions, a hyphen will not be separated by words on either side, due to:

• End-of-line hyphenation
• If a sentence you’re writing extends off of the page before you have concluded the word you are writing, you can use end-of-line hyphenation to split a word in half and continue it on the next line.
• Multiple hyphenations next to one another
• If discussing two hyphenations of similar words, such as having a pre-breakfast coffee or a post-breakfast coffee, you can write it using a hyphen like so:
• Imelda had a pre- and post-breakfast coffee every day.

As well as this, when writing speech, you can use a hyphen at the end of the phrase to imply a speaker has been cut off or interrupted. In this case, you would use a space after the final word of the phrase and insert the dash before the speech marks conclude, in place of other punctuation:

• Sadie frowned. “I don’t want to go to the park. I want to go to -”
• “We always do what you want!” Rahim shouted.

Hyphens and dashes can get a bit complicated. In general, the difference between the two is that dashes are surrounded by spaces and hyphens are surrounded by words… most of the time.

When presented with the concept of slashes, the world can open up for some young writers. Wow, the opportunity to choose between two words rather than picking one!

While the concept is fun, the use of slashes in writing isn’t quite so exciting. Slashes do not just represent a choice between two options, but are also used to infer a connection or conflict between the two options.

One of the common misconceptions learners can take away from learning of slashes is the idea that they can use them frequently to avoid picking between two words:

• Olivia wore her red/blue jumper.

In this example, the learner is using the slash to avoid choosing whether the jacket is blue or red, or perhaps to show that the jacket is both blue and red. In using the slash to show this, the learner has inferred a conflict between the colours of the jacket where there is none, confusing the meaning of the sentence.

As well as this, slashes are sometimes used to suggest the reader has the choice between the words:

• Campers should bring a tin of beans and/or a Pot Noodle to eat in the evening.

When relating this back to Olivia’s jumper, it doesn’t make sense for the reader to choose the colour of the jumper. Her jumper is either red, blue or both.

Remind learners that when used in nonfiction writing, the forward slash is typically used to represent a connection, conflict or uncertainty between two options, and that the person using the slash is giving ownership of that information to someone else.

When writing fictional writing, it is very rare to encounter a situation where a slash is needed (unless transcribing poetry or song lyrics, but that’s a whole other structure to explore.)

Bedrock’s grammar curriculum includes explicit teaching of dashes, hyphens, semicolons, brackets and more, ensuring learners have a clear, structured understanding of complex punctuation. This curriculum forms a tool both for teaching grammar and ensuring taught grammar is reinforced, leading to more coherent written communication and improved reading comprehension from KS1 to sixth form and beyond - everyone can benefit from a strong understanding of grammar, and this is something that needs topping up over time.

Discover how Bedrock’s core curriculum can benefit your learners.