(Remember encyclopedias? Those were the days.) Em Dash-Definition So I did what any educated American would do and went straight to Wikipedia. Truthfully, I was ignorant of the em dash until Joe first approached me about a punctuation post. Video of the Day.Īnd now, another punctuation term that you probably have never heard before: the em dash.
To type an en dash, hold down the Option key and press the Minus key. Alternatively, press the Hyphen key twice and press Space. To type an em dash, hold down the Shift and Option keys and press the Minus key.
Type three hyphens in the left-hand box, to be replaced with (paste the e. Find an em dash some existing document and copy it to the clipboard. What I suggest works well on Windows Word and should work on a Mac as well. On a PC, you can use an Emoji keyboard or type the 'Alt Code,' Alt + 0151. The em dash keyboard shortcut differs depending on if you're using a Mac or PC. This format is often used in bibliographies when citing multiple works by the same author. Three em dashes indicate the absence of an entire word. Typically, two em dashes represent the absence of one or more letters in a word. It can substitute for an unknown element, like a missing word or letter.
