1. Passive vs. Active voice
PUNCTUATION (Part II)
Grammar Review for Academic Purposes
Dashes, hyphens, parentheses & brackets
Passive vs. Active voice
Taller de inglés científico
para publicaciones académicas
Mexico City, México
August-September 2014

2. Other punctuation
The dash
-, --
Parentheses and brackets
( ), [ ]

3. Dash vs. Hyphen Two types of dashes: n-dash and m-dash
The n-dash is used for number ranges or distances. The ‘n’ indicates that the length of the ‘–’ is the width of an ‘n’.
e.g. pp. 7-8
People of age are more prone to hypertension.
The Delhi-Sidney flight was late.

4. Dash vs. Hyphen
2) The m-dash is used to separate a dependent clause. The m-dash is the width of one ‘m’.
e.g. One reason to use m-dashes--and I have more than one reason--is to show you that an m-dash is significantly longer than an n-dash or a mere hyphen. 
It is also used for a final part of a sentence that does not really flow with the rest.
e.g. Several friends were there—Sarah, Arun and Smila.
In MSWord – you type two dashes together and hit return = m-dash

5. Dash vs. Hyphen
A hyphen is used to separate the words in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. For instance: The T-rex has a movement-based vision. My blog is blogger-powered. John’s idea was pooh-poohed.

6. Brackets and parentheses
more common than brackets
include extra, less important information that could be omitted
parentheses de-emphasize a clause or sentence while an m-dash emphasizes it
e.g. I will meet John (who went to school with me).
I will meet John. (We were great buddies.)
vs. I will meet John—my best friend.

7. Brackets
Brackets
explains something or adds missing material
used in math
a translation of a word or phrase from an original language
e.g.
John found Arnisha in the hotel. Diana was with him when she [Arnisha] entered.
The future of psionics [see definition] is in doubt.

8. Nested brackets in parentheses
This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes brackets [that is, square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence]).