Comment by crimony
11 hours ago
Microsoft Word automatically converts dashes to em dashes as soon as you hit space at the end of the next word after the dash.
11 hours ago
Microsoft Word automatically converts dashes to em dashes as soon as you hit space at the end of the next word after the dash.
That's the only way I know how to get an em dash. That's how I create them. I sometimes have to re-write something to force the "dash space <word> space" sequence in order for Word to create it, and then I copy and paste the em dash into the thing I'm working on.
Alt-0151 on the numpad in Windows.
Long-press on the hyphen on most Android keyboards.
Or open whenever "Character Map" application that usually comes with any desktop OS, and copy it from there.
Windows 10/11’s clipboard stack lets you pin selections into the clipboard, so — and a variety of other characters live in mine. And on iOS you just hold down -, of course.
Option shift - in macOS (option - gives you an en dash).
You can Google search "em-dash" then copy/paste from the resulting page.
Ctrl+Shit+U + 2014 (em dash) or 2013 (en dash) in Linux. Former academic here, and I use the things all the time. You can find them all over my pre-LLM publications.