There's some relief, but only if you're working in Microsoft Office apps like Word or Outlook. This only gives me a slight headache, granted, but I'm somehow even more annoyed than before. You can find your dash of choice under Symbols. And that series of words was so profoundly absurd that it gave me a migraine.Īn easier (but no less infuriating) method is to open the emoji keyboard. If you have a numeric keyboard, hold down the Alt key and type 0151 for an em dash or 0150 for an en dash. On Windows it's.less simple: you need to use an alt code to get an em dash. On a Mac, the keyboard shortcut Option + Dash (-) makes an en dash, and Option + Shift + Dash (-) makes an em dash. If you're a Mac user, congratulations: you basically only need to read the next sentence. Make an em dash or en dash with a keyboard shortcut
It's upsetting, to be honest.Įveryone has an opinion about how to use em dashes-and their shorter cousins, en dashes-but let's ignore all that and just talk about how to type them. We live in a world where the underscore is represented, but the em dash is not. There are two kinds of writers: those who like em dashes and impostors.Īnd yet, for some reason, there's no em dash key on a keyboard.
