Dash Dash The dash is a punctuation mark that is similar in appearance to and , but differs from these symbols in both length and height. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash (–), equal to half the height of the font; the em dash (—), twice as long as the en dash; and the horizontal bar (―), whose length varies across typefaces. Historically, the names of en dash and em dash were loosely related to the width of a lower-case "n" and upper-case "M", respectively, in commonly used typefaces. Usage varies both within English and in
Octet rule and used it to help formulate his cubical atom model and the "rule of eight", which began to distinguish between valence and valence electrons. In 1919 Irving Langmuir refined these concepts further and renamed them the "cubical octet atom" and "octet theory". The "octet theory" evolved into what is now known as the "octet rule". The quantum theory of the atom explains the eight electrons as a closed shell with an sp electron configuration. A closed-shell configuration is one in which low-lying energy levels are full and higher energy levels are empty. For example, the neon atom ground state has