travessões

Travessões is a punctuation mark used in Portuguese that corresponds to the em dash in English. The symbol is a long horizontal line, longer than a hyphen, and serves several syntactic and typographic functions.

The primary uses of the travessão include marking direct speech and signaling dialogue in prose. In narrative texts, each line of dialogue is typically introduced by a travessão, followed by a space and the spoken text. When a single speaker has multiple consecutive lines, every new line starts with a travessão. The same mark can also indicate interruptions or sudden changes in thought within a sentence, often conveying a sense of abruptness or emphasis.

Travessões are also employed to insert clarifications or explanations within a sentence, in a way that resembles parentheses but with stronger emphasis. They can enclose appositive or incidental information, or substitute for brackets to highlight a remark: for example, a sentence like “O plano — que havia sido decidido na reunião — não funcionou.” uses the dash to set off the parenthetical element.

In terms of typography, the usage and spacing around travessões can vary between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. A common convention is to place a space on both sides of the dash when it functions as an interrupter or as a parenthetical marker, and to place a space after the dash in dialogue introductions.

Differences with other dashes, such as the hyphen or en dash, are primarily typographic: the travessão is longer and serves narrative and clarifying purposes beyond mere word connection.