En (typography)
unit of measurement in the field of typography, half of an em
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).
History
Some sources claim the term "en" was derived from the letter "n", which is roughly half the width of the letter "m". This etymology, however, is disputed.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q820906. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “En (typography)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.