How to type Em Dash
To type Em Dash (—), press Alt + 0151 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + Shift + - on Mac, or write — in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2014 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2014 on Linux, or 2014 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Em Dash
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2014
- Windows
- Alt + 0151
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0151 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + Shift + - | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | — | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2014 | EM DASH |
Symbols related to Em Dash
Unicode's confusables table, the one registrars use against spoofed domains, lists ― as close enough to be mistaken for it, and the rest are filed under dash in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other punctuation symbols
— lives in the General Punctuation block (U+2000-U+206F), dashes, quotation marks, spaces and reference marks used across languages. Within Unicode it is classified as Pd, a dash. Every hyphen and dash variant shares this category.
What Em Dash is used for
— belongs in prose rather than in an equation. LaTeX writes it ---, a text command, and there is no maths command for it at all: it is a sign that gets written down, not an operator that acts on anything. Putting it inside $...$ is how it comes out looking wrong.
What — gets confused with
— has lookalikes that are a different character underneath. Search, sorting and anything that compares strings can tell them apart even where a reader cannot.
– (U+2013) is the en dash, the one that belongs in a range of numbers.
- (U+002D) is the hyphen, which is neither.
What Unicode says about Em Dash
Unicode annotates — directly. Against U+2014 the code chart carries the note “May be used in pairs to offset parenthetical text”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from — to two-em dash (U+2E3A) and katakana-hiragana prolonged sound mark (U+30FC). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Em Dash looks nearly right but not quite.
How Em Dash behaves in software
— is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
Every way to write Em Dash
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2014 |
| Decimal | 8212 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 80 94 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 20 14 |
| HTML entity | — |
| HTML numeric | — or — |
| CSS | \2014 |
| JavaScript | \u2014 |
| Python | \u2014 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%80%94 |
| LaTeX, in prose | --- |
| SVG | 2014.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If — arrives as —
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 80 94 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.