Redaction
A name in a published document is deliberately removed — a source, a minor, a party to a settlement. Two dashes delete the letters without inventing a placeholder name.
Copy & paste · Character reference
The two-em dash (⸺): one character, two ems wide
Copy the two-em dash (U+2E3A) in one click, learn the one job it exists for — hiding letters in a name — and why typing two em dashes is not the same thing.
Or select it by hand
Click the box to select the character, then press Ctrl + C (⌘ + C on Mac).
- Character
- Two-em Dash
- Unicode
- U+2E3A
- HTML entity
- —
- Plain-text fallback
- -
Em Dash family
The long dashes — for asides, interruptions and full-width rules.
The two-em dash (⸺, U+2E3A) is a single Unicode character, two em dashes wide, and it does exactly one thing in edited prose: it stands in for missing letters in a name. A censored surname, a person whose identity is unknown, a plaintiff in a court judgment, a speaker the transcript does not name — anywhere a name has been withheld or lost, the two-em dash takes its place. Chicago and the Oxford style guides both describe it in those terms, which is why it survives at all in a punctuation system that otherwise has no use for a double-width dash.
The detail that trips people up is that the two-em dash is a character, not a repeat. Typing two em dashes in a row looks similar in a document but is two characters: a style check, a word count, a search or a line-breaking algorithm all treat “——” and “⸺” differently. That matters when the dash is carrying editorial meaning, because the visual result is the same and the machine-readable result is not. It also matters the other way round: this site’s tools match U+2E3A inside the em dash family, so a two-em dash in a draft is found and deleted exactly like an ordinary em dash.
One practical warning: font support is patchy. The character was added in Unicode 6.1 and is missing from many older system fonts, where it renders as a hollow box, a question mark or nothing at all. If your document has to survive on an unknown reader’s machine — an email, a web page without a font fallback, a plain-text export — two em dashes are more portable than the real character. Use the two-em dash in typeset, font-controlled output, and the portable stand-in everywhere else.
How to type a two-em dash
Keyboard shortcuts for every platform — or skip the typing and copy the character above.
| Platform | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Any keyboard | No shortcut exists — use the copy button above |
| Windows (Character Map) | charmap.exe → search U+2E3A or “two-em dash” |
| Mac | Emoji & Symbols (⌃⌘Space) → search “two-em dash” |
| Google Docs | Insert → Special characters → search “two-em dash” |
| HTML / CSS | ⸺ · content: "\2E3A" |
| LaTeX | No standard command — use \char"2E3A with a font that has it |
Two-em Dash examples
What the character looks like doing its job — and what changes if you swap in a different dash.
A redacted or unknown surname
The letter was signed by Mr. ⸺ of Bristol.
A censored proper name
The report names ⸺ as the intermediary.
A stand-in where the name is unknown
Witness ⸺ declined to comment.
A repeated name in some bibliography styles
⸺, Essays on Punctuation (London, 1911).
When a name is withheld
Four editorial situations call for a two-em dash, and each has a different convention behind it.
Unknown identity
The author genuinely does not know the name — an unrecorded signatory, an unidentified witness — and the dash marks the gap in the record rather than hiding anything.
Editorial anonymity
Journalism and academic publishing use it where naming someone would cause harm, and the dash signals to the reader that the omission is deliberate.
Quotation of an incomplete source
When the original text is damaged or illegible, the dash stands for the letters that cannot be read — the same convention used for lacunae in classical texts.
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 a two-em dash?
A dash two ems wide that marks missing letters in a name — a censored surname, an unknown author or a name withheld from a court report. It is one character, U+2E3A, not two em dashes typed together.
Should I type two em dashes or use the character?
Use the character when the document is typeset and the font supports it, because then the dash is a single semantic unit. Type two em dashes when portability matters more — in email, plain text and web pages without a font fallback, where U+2E3A often renders as a missing-glyph box.
How do I type a two-em dash?
There is no keyboard shortcut for it on any platform, because it is far too rare to earn one. Copy it from the button above, or insert it from the Character Map on Windows or Emoji & Symbols on macOS by searching its code point, U+2E3A.
Why does the two-em dash show up as a box?
The font you are reading does not have a glyph for U+2E3A, so the renderer substitutes a missing-glyph box. It is not a defect in the character or in your text — switch fonts, or use two em dashes if the reader’s font is out of your control.
What is the difference between the two-em and three-em dash?
Width and job. The two-em dash (U+2E3A) hides letters in a single name. The three-em dash (U+2E3B) is wider and is used in bibliographies in place of a repeated author’s name, so the reader knows the entry belongs to the name above it.
Is a two-em dash the same as a long dash?
No — “long dash” usually means the em dash (U+2014), which is one em wide and marks an aside. The two-em dash is double that width and only ever stands for missing text, so the two are not interchangeable even though both look like long lines.
Strip two-em dashes from a draft
The em dash remover treats U+2E3A as part of the em dash family, so multi-width dashes never survive a cleanup.
Remove every em dash