Proper use of the dash?

[WideLane]

Apologies for what will almost certainly be Friday night's most boring thread! But please can anyone explain the proper use to me in very simple terms? I have googled but it's all going over the top of my head a bit! Thank you.

erm.... what do you mean by 'the dash' ?

Is this a punctuation issue?

Should you be posting in pedants’ corner?

Do you mean " - " ?

Head to YouTube - the bite size stuff on there is helping me just keep ahead of my KS2 kids... and that’s how I’d use it:

Hyphen?

Did anyone think op was talking about the dash board of her car?

There are three different marks that you might mean by 'dash': a hyphen, an 'n' dash and an 'm' dash.

Here's an explanation of the difference between them.

I thought she was talking about the Friday night dash to the shops for booze....... #honestlynotalush

I was split between the dashboard of the car (my first thought) , and thinking it was a phrase I didn't know.... like 'the walk of shame'..... or something for a 'dash' somewhere.
Punctuation hadn't occurred to me

Is OP talking about the often wrongly used dash?

Op, do you mean the hyphen? For example, in the name Anne-Marie?

If this is about punctuation, then I heard an editor on R4 explain it well. He said to use it if it helps the reader know that two words belong together. So 'bite-size' would (I think) be an example.

Nothing to do with grammar.

It's entirely a question of style.

In year 6 we teach that dashes can be used as parenthesis, for repetition or to add a final comment.
Examples:
I took my dog -a black labrador- to the park.
It was cold - so cold I couldn't feel my toes.
I tried lobster for the first time yesterday - I didn't like it.

The OP seems to be very quiet?

Hello, thanks for the replies and I'm so sorry for not acknowledging sooner. I forgot I'd posted this - gin had been drunk! I did mean dash as in punctuation, although I'm liking the idea of the dash for gin.