Em Dash
U+2014The dash everyone has. Supported by essentially every font and understood by every editor, so it is the safe replacement for the rarer widths.
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Multi-em dash remover — fix ⸺ and ⸻
The two-em and three-em dashes are real characters that most fonts cannot draw, so they arrive as empty boxes. Replace them with an em dash, a hyphen, or nothing.
Dash remover tool
Unicode carries three em-width dashes: the familiar em dash (—, U+2014), the two-em dash (⸺, U+2E3A) and the three-em dash (⸻, U+2E3B). Only the first is widely supported. The other two are single characters that happen to be two and three ems wide, and they exist for two editorial jobs: standing in for letters that are missing from a name — a censored or unknown author — and repeating a name in a bibliography, where Chicago style uses three em dashes instead of printing the same author again.
Because the characters are rare, font support is thin. A page that displays fine in one browser can show ⸺ as an empty rectangle in another, and the same document opened on a colleague’s machine can turn every citation dash into a row of boxes. The text is not corrupt; the font simply has no glyph for the code point, which is why the box appears instead of a dash.
This page matches only U+2E3A and U+2E3B, so ordinary em dashes, en dashes and hyphens are left alone. The default replacement is a real em dash: the line still reads as a dash, every font can draw it, and a validator is far more likely to accept it. Choose Nothing when the dashes were a redaction and the name should simply not be there, or a hyphen if the destination wants ASCII.
The third and fourth dashes
Three em-width characters, three levels of font support. Only the first is safe to assume.
Two-em Dash
U+2E3AMarks missing letters inside a name: “the author, A⸺ B⸺, declined.” Two ems wide, one character, and often drawn as a box.
Three-em Dash
U+2E3BRepeats an author in a bibliography: “———, The Second Book.” The widest dash in Unicode, and the least supported of the three.
Why the box appears
Font coverage
A font only contains the characters its designer drew. U+2E3A and U+2E3B sit in a rarely-populated corner of the Unicode table, so most web fonts and system fonts leave them out.
Fallback fonts
When the first font lacks a glyph, the browser asks the next one. If none of them has it, the box is the last resort — so the character can render on your machine and fail on a reader’s.
Copying is not converting
Copying a box gives you the character, not the picture. Paste it into a plain textarea and it looks like nothing; paste it into a validator and it is an unexpected code point.
The practical rule: keep the real character only when the style guide demands it and the publishing chain controls the fonts. Everywhere else, an em dash that renders is worth more than a two-em dash that does not.
Related dash tools
The multi-width dashes travel with the rest of the em dash family.
What Is a Two-Em Dash?
The missing-letters character in citations and redactions.
What Is a Three-Em Dash?
How bibliographies repeat an author’s name.
Horizontal Bar Remover
The other invisible-in-plain-sight em dash family member.
Em Dash Remover
Delete the whole em dash family, including these two.
Convert Dashes
Turn every dash in a document into one consistent style.
All Dash Symbols
All 11 dash characters with code points and support notes.
Questions
Why do my dashes show as empty boxes?
Because the font in use has no glyph for U+2E3A or U+2E3B, so the renderer draws the missing-glyph box — a small rectangle — in its place. The characters are intact; the typeface simply never drew them. Replacing them with an em dash fixes the display everywhere.
How do I type a two-em or three-em dash?
You generally cannot from a keyboard. Most people insert the character through a special-characters picker, a word processor’s autocorrect, or by copying it. Word and Google Docs have no shortcut for either, which is why they arrive from a bibliography manager or a publisher’s template rather than from typing.
Is a two-em dash the same as typing two em dashes?
No. “——” is two U+2014 characters, which render with a visible join or a small gap depending on the font, and count as two characters to a word count or a search. “⸺” is a single U+2E3A. Editors and validators treat them differently, and only the single character carries the “missing letters” meaning.
What should I replace them with?
For prose, a single em dash reads correctly and is universally supported. For a bibliography, most styles accept three ordinary em dashes in place of the three-em dash if the font cannot draw it — but check the style guide first, since some publishers insist on the real character.
Will this remove ordinary em dashes too?
No. The tool is locked to U+2E3A and U+2E3B, so the em dashes doing their normal work in asides and interruptions are untouched. If you do want every em-family character gone, the em dash remover handles the whole family.
Can I remove them from a whole document or a reference list?
Yes — paste as much as you like. A hundred-entry bibliography is the same job as a single line, the counter reports how many were found, and the cleanup runs in your browser with no upload and no word limit.
Ready to clean your text?
No sign-up, no upload, no word limit. Paste, pick, and copy the result.
Remove dashes now