En (typography)

An en (from English en quadrat) is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. By definition, it is equivalent to half of the body height of the typeface (e.g., in 16-point type it is 8 points). The en is sometimes referred to as the "nut", to avoid confusion with the similar-sounding "em".

The en dash (–) and en space ( ) are each one en wide. In English, the en dash is commonly used for inclusive ranges (e.g., "pages 12–17" or "August 7, 1988 – November 26, 2005"), to connect prefixes to open compounds (e.g., "pre–World War II").

The en-dash is also increasingly used to replace the long dash ("—", also called an em dash or em rule). When using it to replace a long dash, spaces are needed either side of it – like so. This is standard practice in the German language, where the hyphen is the only dash without spaces on either side (line breaks are not spaces per se).