How to create and insert em dash in Google Docs

Special punctuation marks help a lot when you are looking forward to getting a clearer copy of your writing. But, Standard keyboards do not come with dedicated keys for special punctuation keys. If you are unsure about what Hyphen, en dash, em dash in Google Docs are, let me help you with it. Hyphen is a dash (-), an en dash is a combination of two dashes (–), and em dash is a combination of 3 dashes (—).

How to create em dash in Google Docs manually

You need to open a Google Docs file to get started with creating dashes and hyphens manually. Creating hyphen might sound useless since it is already there on your keyboard. You can locate the hyphen key on your keyboard beside the zero key.

To get started with creating punctuation marks that you won’t be finding a specific key for on your keyboard, you need to open a Google document.

Why it is recommended for you to open Google Docs is because Google doc comes with special characters tool that enables you to add them without having to remember their codes. To get started, click anywhere within the document or where you want to insert the punctuation mark. Then click on Insert and then click the “special characters” option.

Once selected the “special characters” option, you will see a window like below. Within the search bar type em dash or en dash. Then, you simply need to select the symbol from the search results. Make sure to choose the right one from the results.

Once you select the dash you want, it automatically gets inserted directly into the file where your cursor is in the file or document.

Following the above method can be a lot of hassle if you tend to use these punctuation marks a lot. In such cases, you can tell Google Docs to automatically format hyphens into en dash and an em dash. Keep reading to know how to automatically create en dash and em dash in Google docs.

Creates en dash and em dash automatically

Google Docs does not automatically convert hyphens into en dash and em dash whenever you will type – – and – – – respectively. But, unlike Google Docs, Microsoft Word comes with a built-in function – “AutoFormat” which converts hyphens automatically into en dash and em dash whenever you will type – – and – – – respectively.

But, you can definitely set preferences that will convert strings of characters like hyphens into en dash and em dash in Google Docs. To insert en dash and em dash in Google Docs, select the dash symbol and right-click. Click on Copy and then select Tools option. Within the tools menu, you will find an option labeled as Preferences. Click on it.

A window will pop open. Go under the Automatic Substitution section. Within the Automatic Substitution section, type two or three hyphens into the “Replace” field. Now under the “With” field, paste the dash you copied earlier.

Once done, click on the OK button to save the changes and close the window. You can repeat the above steps for inserting other dashes. Once you are done with settings, the next time you want to insert en dash or em dash in Google Docs, just type two or here hyphens and it will automatically be converted.

With this trick, the functionality of inserting en dash or em dash can be much easier than thought. Apart from these, there are many other ways to create en and em dashes. But, I highly recommend using the above method for inserting en and em dashes easily.

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