Let’s talk about one of my good friends—the em dash. That super long hyphen who pops up in all sorts of content these days—deservedly! Often replaced with the much lesser double hyphen--not cool.

And what about the mysterious en dash—what in the heck is she for? All those answers—and more—below.

The Em Dash

The em dash—oh so versatile—is a lovely replacement for almost any other type of punctuation! It can replace commas, parenthesis, colons, ellipses—who knows what else.

The em dash is long—long like the letter “m”. The en dash is shorter—shorter like the letter “n”. But none so short as the meager hyphen—a speck between compound words.

Should the em dash — when used correctly — be surrounded by spaces? My opinion—fwiw— is that it depends on the font you’re using. Some need it and some don’t—go with your gut.

So—how do you type it?

On a mac—easy peasy—press Option+Shift+Hyphen.

On a PC—not as easy. The internet tells me Alt+0151—but I have no way of testing this. PC users—this blog post goes into some more detail for you.

Also—Word will autocorrect a double hyphen to an em dash—which is nice.

The En Dash

Much less common—and with a much more specific use—is the en dash. The en dash is used almost exclusively with numerals to show a range—for example, K–12, ages 6–8, from November 6–12—you get the idea.

To type it—on a mac—press Option+Hyphen.

PC—Alt+0150.

Bonus

Here are a few of my other favorite keyboard shortcuts on a mac—sorry PCers!—for some lesser-used marks:

Bullet Point: Option+8 •

Cent sign: Option+4 ¢

Ellipses: Option+Colon …

Disclaimer—not all of the em dashes in this article have been used correctly—for the sake of comedic overkill.