7/2/2023 0 Comments Copy em dash![]() ![]() If you - like me - use Google Docs almost exclusively and love your em dashes, I’d recommend creating an automatic substitution command.Ĭlick on the “Tools” menu, and then click on “Preferences.” At the bottom, you’ll see a tick box next to the words “Automatic substitution.” Ensure it’s toggled on, and then set a command to replace - with - (grab the symbol from the “Special Characters” menu referenced above, and copy/paste it into the right-hand text box). In order to put an em dash into your work, navigate to the “Insert” menu, and then select “Special Characters.” Instead of scrolling through the various symbols available to you, you can simply search for “em,” and the dash will come right up. However, in this program, dual hyphens stay dual hyphens by default. No matter where you do your writing, there’s a trick to ensuring you get the perfect em dash every time! In Google DocsĪlthough MS Word has long been considered industry standard, many writers have moved on to Google’s free cloud-based word processing platform, Google Docs. Here’s how to type an em dash in your favorite word processor If you want to benefit from the em dash without littering your manuscript with double hyphens (–), here’s what you need to know. But despite its flexibility, there’s one way in which the em dash is anything but intuitive - and that’s typographically. With such a wide range of acceptable applications, an em dash might seem easy to use. It’s used in so many manners: to separate clauses that still want to be close friends to create asides or add emphasis or signal amplification or denote interruption. In Markdown, three hyphens in a row makes an em dash (as long as they aren't alone on a line).Ah, the em dash - that multifaceted, all-purpose punctuation mark that can act as a parenthesis, comma, colon, semicolon or even quotation mark. In Microsoft Word, typing two hyphens after a word and then starting the next word with no spaces will put an em dash between the words. You can also define one of the keys on your keyboard as a compose key, which makes entering special characters on Linux much more Mac-like.Ĭertain software applications and markup languages make things easier. For an em dash, that's CTRL-SHIFT-u, then 2014. In Linux, you can hold down CTRL and SHIFT while typing u (for Unicode), then type the hex Unicode number followed by the SPACE or ENTER key. Click the omega (Ω) to see the grid that contains the em dash. If you hold the WINDOWS key and type a period (.) you'll see an onscreen picker for emojis and symbols. This notably doesn't work in the popular writing application Scrivener, which is very likely a nexus of em dashes. In some Windows applications, you can type the hexadecimal Unicode (2014 for an em dash) and then press the CTRL key while typing X. Unfortunately, as many laptops don't include separate number pads, this leaves the majority of users high and dry. Windows still uses Alt codes, so you can type an em dash by holding down the ALT key and typing 0151 on the numeric keypad. Here are a few of the ways to represent an em dash today: If that weren't enough, Unicode can be represented in decimal or hexadecimal,ģ or base-16. In fact, there are now HTML entities that use Unicode. Today, Unicode is almost universal-but Alt codes and HTML entities are still around. ![]() This meant there were at least three ways to type an em dash. As early as 1993, the entity - produced an em dash. Meanwhile, in the early days of the web, HTML specified characters outside the ASCII standard with special entity definitions. Microsoft Alt codes maintained a strong foothold, and Microsoft doubled down on them when it released Windows. In 1988, a Xerox employee named Joe Becker published a paper outlining a universal, international character system called Unicode. At the same time, others were working on ways of encoding larger lists of characters. In the 1980s, Microsoft created "Alt codes," which allowed the user to enter symbols and punctuation not included in the ASCII standard by holding down the ALT key and typing a number on the number pad. The em dash was not part of the ASCII standard. ![]()
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