How to type an em dash on a Mac (—)
Shift-Option-Hyphen. Drop the Shift and you get the shorter en dash, which does a different job.
How do I type an em dash on a Mac?
Press Shift + Option + Hyphen and macOS types — directly, in any app. The en dash is Option + Hyphen (–), one modifier fewer. The plain hyphen is just the key by itself (-). All three work anywhere you can type text.
| Symbol | Keystroke | Use it for | Mojito shortcode |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | Shift + Option + Hyphen | A break in thought | ::emdash |
| – | Option + Hyphen | Ranges: Mon–Fri | ::endash |
| - | Hyphen | Compounds: well-known |
Which one you actually want
An em dash marks a break in thought or sets off a clause — like this one. An en dash is for ranges: Mon–Fri, pages 9–14, a score of 3–1. A plain hyphen joins compound words: well-known, co-worker. Mixing them up isn't a crime, but a hyphen doing an em dash's job reads as a typo to anyone who's paying attention, and a hyphen standing in for a range (Mon-Fri) is one of the more common small errors in otherwise careful writing.
Stopping the auto-convert
Some apps — Pages, Mail, and other Cocoa text views — will turn two hyphens (--) typed in a row into an em dash automatically. That's macOS's system-wide Smart Dashes text substitution, and it's why an em dash sometimes appears when you didn't press the shortcut. Turn it off per app with Edit → Substitutions → Smart Dashes in that app's menu bar, or globally in System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit.
Microsoft Word runs its own AutoCorrect logic instead of macOS's system-wide substitution, so turning off Smart Dashes in System Settings won't touch Word's behavior. In Word, the equivalent switch is under Preferences → AutoCorrect → AutoFormat As You Type, where "Symbol characters (— ) with symbols" controls the same conversion.
To confirm any of these shortcuts on your own keyboard before committing them to muscle memory, open Keyboard Viewer — System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → Show Input Menu in menu bar, then "Show Keyboard Viewer" from that menu bar item. Hold Option, then Shift+Option, and watch which key lights up with which dash.
Worth knowing: the em dash has picked up a reputation lately as a tell for AI-written text, since chat models lean on it hard. Feels a little unfair to a character that's been doing honest work in English prose for centuries.
One more wrinkle if you write in Markdown: three hyphens alone on a line (---) usually renders as a horizontal rule, not a dash of any kind. That's a convention of whatever renders the file, unrelated to macOS's keyboard shortcuts or Smart Dashes.
Faster with Mojito
If you don't want to remember which modifier goes with which dash, Mojito turns both into shortcodes: type ::emdash for — or ::endash for –, anywhere you're typing.
::emdash autocompleting in TextEdit.Dashes, in more detail
How do I stop my Mac converting -- into —?
Turn off Smart Dashes in Edit → Substitutions → Smart Dashes within the app, or system-wide in System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit. It only affects apps that use macOS's standard text system — it won't touch browsers or apps with their own text engines.
Should there be spaces around an em dash?
Style guides disagree. AP style puts a space on each side ( — ). Chicago style runs it tight against the words with no spaces (—). Pick one and stay consistent within a document; neither is wrong.
How do I type an em dash on Windows?
Hold Alt and type 0151 on the numeric keypad.
What's the em dash entity for HTML?
— for —, – for –. Both are safer than pasting the raw character into a file with uncertain encoding.
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