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Em Dash symbol

Type :emdash: · Punctuation

What — is for

The long dash, used to break a sentence open for an aside, or to swap in for a colon when the tone should be sharper. Most style guides set it tight against the words on either side; a few add spaces. Pick one and hold to it, because mixing the two in one document is the thing readers actually notice.

How to type —

The shortcuts below are the built-in routes. With Emoji Anywhere installed you can skip all of them and type :emdash: in any text field instead, which is the same on every platform.

macOS

Option + Shift + Hyphen

Windows

Alt + 0151

Hold Alt and type the digits on the keypad.

Shortcodes

:emdash: :mdash::em_dash:

On the web

HTML —

Unicode U+2014

What — gets mistaken for

en dash

Half the width and a different job: ranges and spans, as in 10–20. If the dash sits between two numbers you want this one.

-

hyphen

The key on your keyboard. It joins words into compounds and nothing else. Two hyphens typed as -- is a stand-in that autocorrect usually repairs.

More from punctuation

Every symbol and kaomoji is in the full gallery .

Tired of copying — from pages like this one?

That is exactly what the extension removes. Here is the whole interaction, in every text field you already use:

You type

:emda
:emdash:
Enter

You get

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