How to Insert a Long Dash, an EN Dash, and a Hyphen in Google Docs?

May 1, 2022

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In this tutorial, we will show you how to insert a long dash, an en dash, and a hyphen in Google Docs. We recommend you study this manual carefully and start practicing!

Checklist of crucial points we aim to highlight here:

Inserting Symbols via “Special characters”
Other Symbols & Ways

The em dash or a long dash is not a common character, so that you won’t find a key for it on the standard keyboards. Therefore, we have to use the text editor tool called “Special characters” to get one.

But first, let us quickly show you how to tell apart the long em dash from a bit smaller en dash and the regular hyphen. Now let’s create them!Look at the screenshot below, please.

Watch the video from https://thegoodocs.com/ and find out how to insert a long dash, an en dash, and a hyphen in Google Docs:

Inserting Symbols via “Special characters”

The regular way to get a long dash in the document is to use the “Special characters” menu. So, we click on the place in the document where we want to put a special character and go to the “Insert” item on the toolbar at the top of the page; then, we go down and press the “Special characters” line

Click on the first drop-down with a “Symbol” on it and then select “Punctuation”

Next, we need the second drop-down, where we select “Dash/Connector”

Now we can see the whole range of dashes/connectors

And here’s the one we are looking for — “EM DASH”. So, we click on it. And here it is in the document

For example, let’s insert the en dash. The sign of the en dash is on the left from the sign of the em dash. It is like half the size of the em dash. It is very likely that you’ll need this one as well. Here is “EN DASH”

And, for instance, let’s insert the hyphen, too. And the first item here (“HYPHEN-MINUS”) is the regular hyphen that we normally insert via the keyboard. Here it is

NB! In this menu, there is a wide variety of other special characters and punctuation characters, in particular. So, you can select here the characters that you need.

Other Symbols & Ways

Additionally, there’s one more way to get a long dash and other ones in the document. It’s via keyboard shortcuts, yet the advanced ones are called ALT codes. And these require having a keyboard with a numeric keypad. Not everyone has it, yet you have the previous method.

With the number pad on your keyboard, make sure that the “Num Lock” key is on. Then press-hold the “Alt” key and type 0 1 5 1, and release. Here’s the em dash. For the en dash, hold down “Alt” and type 0 1 5 0. And here you have it.

For Mac OS, it works a little differently and does not require having the numeric keypad. Press-hold “Option” with “Shift” at once and type the common hyphen for the em dash. And for the en dash, hold down just “Option” and press the hyphen.

We hope this tutorial will help you learn how to insert a long dash, an en dash, and a hyphen in Google Docs. Good luck!

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Team TheGoodocs

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