General Question

lilakess's avatar

Is there a way, in Word, to make a dash?

Asked by lilakess (789points) September 24th, 2008

Sometimes when I hit the—Word will automatically turn it into a dash, but I’d love to know if there’s a way to do it myself.

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6 Answers

iwamoto's avatar

maybe wiki can answer this strange question

blastfamy's avatar

word uses the long dash when you type a <space>dash<space><text><space>, or something similar. This may be useful in at least predicting where they will happen.

robmandu's avatar

When you type a space and one or two hyphens between text, Microsoft Office Word automatically inserts an en dash ( – ). For example, if you type See pages 3 <hyphen> 10, Word converts it to See pages 3 – 10.

If you type two hyphens and do not include a space before the hyphens, an em dash ( — ) is created. For example, if you type Many pines <hyphen><hyphen> including ponderosa and lodgepole <hyphen><hyphen> grow here Word converts it to Many pines—including ponderosa and lodgepole—grow here.

Crafting this quip made that much more difficult thanks to Fluther’s automatic Textile Markup conversion.

boxing's avatar

If you want to do the en dash and em dash yourself, you can do this: go to the menu “Insert” then “symbol”.

A window would come up with all the special symbols including two forms of dashes. Click on the one you want and click insert.

On the same window you have the option to create a keyboard shortcut for your convenience.

marinelife's avatar

To provide a second option following on to what boxing has said, click Insert, click Symbol, click the Special Characters tab and em dash is the top of the list. It also shows you the keyboard shortcut so you can type one yourself.

danielpauldavis's avatar

MSWord will do that without the spaces. Two hyphens will make a dash.

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