21

When writing emails and articles I often find myself in the need to use a long/em dash — character, not to be confused with the hyphen - character. Normally what I end up doing is I type two consecutive hyphens -- and hit the Space key, which then ends up replacing the two hyphens with the long dash.

However, when posting articles in browser-based editors this doesn't always work — such as with the post editor here — so I have to type the double hyphen + Space elsewhere, like in a dummy email, copy the long dash from there and paste it here. This is very inconvenient of course.

I'd like a shortcut to enter the long dash character directly.

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
45

This might be one of those that changes by language, but on a UK English keyboard [& from comments, also US English], there are 4 dashes available from the key to the right of 0, Minus.

- - key alone (hyphen)
– - Opt ⌥ (en dash)
— - Opt ⌥ Shift ⇧ (em dash)
_ - Shift ⇧ (underscore)

Late Edit...
To complete the set, & from comments...

Ctrl ⌃ Opt ⌥ - will give 'information separator one' which looks like a space "" & doesn't even seem to print in here. You could, however use the keyboard replacement tool to turn that into a true minus sign... −

enter image description here

Improve this answer
5
  • 10
    This is true on the American English keyboard as well.
    – AAM111
    Commented Apr 11, 2019 at 13:22
  • 1
    To complete the standard quartet, is there a way to type U+2212 MINUS SIGN (−) without the manual Unicode input method?
    – wchargin
    Commented Apr 12, 2019 at 1:54
  • @wchargin for U+2212 you have to use character viewer or unicode hex input. Do you really have a need for that? Is there a problem using the ascii version available on every keyboard, which is called "hyphen-minus".
    – Tom Gewecke
    Commented Apr 12, 2019 at 12:29
  • @TomGewecke: Yeah, I use U+2212 all the time. One benefit is that “+” and “−” are the same width (in any good font). It’s also just semantically the right thing to do—for the same reason that you wouldn’t typeset an em dash as three consecutive hyphens.
    – wchargin
    Commented Apr 13, 2019 at 1:46
  • 1
    @wchargin - I added a method to complete your 'set' :)
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 13, 2019 at 7:47
11

After some digging around I've found that Alt+Shift+Minus renders the long/em dash (—) character.

Improve this answer
11
  • 3
    I was about to write an answer, but discovered that though I can set all 4 dashes in here as comments - – — _ that in the answer space the n-dash – & m-dash — were coming out as the same character.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 11, 2019 at 8:37
  • 1
    & yet once posted, it corrects itself. Odd.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 11, 2019 at 8:40
  • 7
    @Tetsujin It's because the monospace font renders – and — identically.
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Apr 11, 2019 at 13:39
  • 3
    Macs do not have Alt keys. The key you are looking for is Option.
    – Glen Yates
    Commented Apr 11, 2019 at 16:05
  • 5
    @GlenYates Don't be so hasty: Every Mac keyboard I've owned has 'alt' on it. The beige ones use to have Option written as well as alt, but that was phased out. It may depend on region/language layout.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Apr 11, 2019 at 16:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .