A pair around an aside
Two em dashes bracket a genuinely parenthetical remark and emphasise it more than commas would. If the aside is short and comma-free, commas are the safer edit.
Copy & paste · Character reference
The em dash (—): copy it, type it, use it well
One click to copy the em dash, plus how to type it on every platform, real examples, and how it differs from the en dash and the hyphen.
Or select it by hand
Click the box to select the character, then press Ctrl + C (⌘ + C on Mac).
- Character
- Em Dash
- Unicode
- U+2014
- HTML entity
- —
- Plain-text fallback
- -
Every em dash in the character set
Four characters look like a long dash and behave differently in a parser. Click any card to copy it.
The em dash (—, Unicode U+2014) is the longest of the standard dashes: roughly the width of a capital M, which is where the name comes from. Its job is to interrupt. It can stand in for a comma, a colon, a semicolon or a pair of parentheses, which is why it appears everywhere in confident prose and why editors so often take it out again. Copy it with the button above, or type it with the shortcut for your platform in the table below.
Every character on this page is a real Unicode character, not an image: paste it into a document, a subject line, a social post, a database field or a code comment and it travels with the text. The cards under “Em dash family” also cover the characters that look identical on screen and are not the same character at all — the horizontal bar (U+2015) that PDFs and InDesign exports prefer, and the two- and three-em dashes (U+2E3A, U+2E3B) used to mark missing letters and repeated authors in bibliographies. If a tool rejects your em dash, the first thing to check is which of those four you actually pasted.
In the other direction, if there are already too many em dashes in a draft, the em dash remover deletes every one of them in a single click, and the AI dash remover handles the machine-written drafts that also contain typed “--” stand-ins. Never sure which dash you are looking at? Select it and check: the em dash is the long one, the en dash is the middle one, and the hyphen is the short joiner inside compound words.
How to type an em dash
Keyboard shortcuts for every platform — or skip the typing and copy the character above.
| Platform | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Windows (any app) | Alt + 0151 on the numeric keypad |
| Windows (Word, Outlook) | Ctrl + Alt + - (numeric keypad) |
| Mac | Shift + Option + - |
| iPhone / Android | Long-press the hyphen key, then pick — |
| Google Docs | Insert → Special characters → search “em dash” |
| Word / Docs AutoCorrect | Type word--word, which converts as you keep typing |
| HTML / CSS | — or — · content: "\2014" |
| Markdown | --- between words (parser dependent) |
Em Dash examples
What the character looks like doing its job — and what changes if you swap in a different dash.
Aside inside a sentence
The plan — risky as it was — worked on the first try.
Abrupt break in thought
I thought the launch was ready — apparently not.
Introducing a payoff
One thing mattered — the budget.
Interrupted dialogue
“But I was going to say—”
When a style guide allows the em dash
Three placements that survive an editorial pass, and the substitution to reach for if yours does not allow the dash at all.
One dash, one payoff
A single dash introduces a list, a punchline or a shift in direction: “one thing mattered — the budget.” A colon does the same job more formally.
Interrupted speech
A dash marks a character cut off mid-sentence — “But I was going to say—” — and no other punctuation replaces it without rewriting the dialogue.
Reading the sentence without the dash is the fastest test: if a pause is doing grammatical work, reach for a comma, a colon or parentheses; if the dash is there for drama and the sentence survives without it, delete it. Thereplace em dash guide maps every substitute with examples, and theem dash remover takes them all out in one click.
Em dash vs en dash vs hyphen
Three characters that look like each other and never behave the same way. Copy the one you need, or read the full reference for each.
Questions
What is an em dash?
The em dash (—, Unicode U+2014) is the longest standard dash, about the width of a capital M. It marks an aside, an interruption or a break in thought, and can replace a comma, a colon, a semicolon or parentheses. Its official name is simply “em dash”; the horizontal bar (U+2015) is a near-identical relative used in some typesetting systems.
How do I copy the em dash?
Click the big card at the top of this page and the em dash is copied to your clipboard, with a confirmation. If your browser blocks clipboard access, click the box in the next panel to select the character and press Ctrl + C (⌘ + C on a Mac).
How do I type an em dash on Windows?
Hold Alt and type 0151 on the numeric keypad — the row of digits above the letters will not work without a NumLock-keypad. In Word you can also press Ctrl + Alt + the minus key on the numeric keypad, or type two hyphens between words and let AutoCorrect convert them.
How do I type an em dash on a Mac?
Press Shift + Option + minus. Without the Shift, Option + minus gives you the en dash instead. On iPhone and Android keyboards, long-press the hyphen key and slide to —.
Em dash vs en dash — what is the difference?
The em dash (—) separates, and the en dash (–) ranges. Use the em dash for asides and breaks in thought, and the en dash for “to” or “through” inside ranges such as 2018–2022, pages 44–48 or the London–Paris route. The hyphen (-) is shorter still and joins compound words such as well-known.
Should there be spaces around an em dash?
It depends on the style guide, not on the character. Chicago and most American book publishing set the em dash closed up: word—word. AP and many newsrooms, along with British publishing, put a space on either side: word — word. Pick one convention and apply it consistently; the tool on this site can clean up either.
Why is the em dash controversial?
It is beloved by writers and distrusted by editors: used well it adds rhythm, overused it reads as breathless. In the AI era it became a stereotype of machine-written text, since models reach for the dash far more often than a human editor would. That is exactly why so many writers now strip it — the em dash remover on this site exists for that job.
Got too many em dashes?
Paste the text, press one button, and every em dash is gone. Free, private and instant.
Remove em dashes instead