Is Feet One Or Two Dashes

Okay, let’s settle this once and for all. You’re writing a note, or maybe typing a particularly urgent text about a foot. Is it a measurement dash, or is it a dash that’s feeling a little lonely? The answer is surprisingly simple—and absolutely ridiculous once you hear the history.

The short answer? One dash. That’s right, a foot is represented by a single prime symbol (′), not a double dash (″). The double dash—or double prime—is for inches. Why? Because some 18th-century typesetter apparently decided our lives needed more punctuation drama.

The Prime Suspects

Imagine you’re telling a carpenter you need a 6-foot board. You write it as 6′. That one little mark is a prime, and it’s been the official foot stand-in since the 1600s. The double prime (″) is for inches, so 6 feet 2 inches becomes 6′ 2″.

But here’s where it gets weird: most people, including professional architects, just use two dashes for everything out of pure laziness. I once saw a blueprint where a 10-foot wall was listed as 10″, and I still haven’t forgiven that intern.

Why Your Keyboard Hates You

Your phone and computer have no idea what a prime symbol is. When you type a single quotation mark (‘), that’s it—you’ve tricked the machine. A true prime symbol is a straight, slanted line that looks like it’s been squished by a bookcase.

Em Dash (—) Definition, Examples, and How to Use It - Grammareer

Fun fact: In typography, the prime symbol was invented because printers got tired of carving tiny feet. Seriously, they just said, “Let’s use a line in the margin and call it a day.” And that day has been confusing us for 400 years.

The Surprising Truth About Your Own Feet

Your actual foot is not a foot long. Shocking, I know. The average adult male foot is about 10.5 inches, so you’d need a dash-and-a-half to describe it. Yet we still measure boards by the foot, which is exactly 12 inches—the length of King Henry I’s actual foot, because apparently royalty set standards by wearing sandals.

If you use the wrong dash, do you know what happens? Absolutely nothing, except a handful of grammar wizards on the internet will hunt you down. I once wrote “5′ 10″” for a height, and a retired math professor emailed me a five-page lecture on “prime integrity.”

The Ultimate Guide to Using Feet and Inches Symbols in Excel

A Practical Guide for the Rest of Us

If you’re writing for a general audience? Use whatever you want. I’ve seen recipes that say “2 cups of flour (1 dash)” and nobody died. But if you’re working in construction or science, stick to the rules: one dash for feet, two dashes for inches.

And if someone calls you out, just say, “It’s a typographic convention dating back to the printing press,” then walk away confidently. They’ll be too confused to argue.

So remember: your foot is one dash. Your ruler is two dashes. And your sanity is somewhere between a prime and a double prime—probably lost in the margins.