Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. How tos

How to type an em dash on a Mac

By
Add as a preferred source on Google
Apple MacBook Pro 14 top down view showing keyboard and touchpad.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The em dash (—) punctuation is a useful stylization in writing and editing that can replace a comma, colon, or parenthesis. Accessing this symbol on a computer can be challenging, depending on the operating system.

You have several options to type or insert the em dash in Windows – for example, using a word processor or text box. However, macOS is well known for having a system integrated methods of accessing the em dash — some you may know and some that might not be as obvious.

Recommended Videos

Keyboard

Apple has made inserting an em dash into your text very simple with a keyboard shortcut. Press the Shift (⇧) + Option (⌥) + Minus (-) keys on your keyboard, and the em dash will appear in your word processor or text box automatically.

This keyboard shortcut is program agnostic, so you can use it in a Windows environment, Google space, or any third-party text area, in addition to Mac applications.

Menu bar

Character View settings on macOS.
Apple

An alternate option is to select the em dash accent from the macOS character viewer, which is located in the drop-down Menu bar at the top of your desktop screen. Select Edit > Emoji & Symbols.

If you’re only seeing emojis, click the small icon in the upper-right corner to expand the window to Character View. Select the Punctuation option in the side menu. Find the em dash, which will be detailed by name on the right once you’ve selected a character. Double-click it to insert it into your word processor or text box.

Search engine

After exploring the other em dash typing methods for macOS, this one might seem a bit pointless. Even so, you can search the term “em dash” in your search engine of choice, copy the symbol, and paste it into your word processor or text box.

Often, the primary search result will be a definition of “em dash,” which includes the proper symbol in parenthesis. This is the case in the Apple Safari browser. Typically, an em dash is not used often in a text, but if you need it again, you can copy and paste it from the original punctuation you pasted.

Looking for more keyboard tricks? The Mac’s text replacement feature is an easy way to create a shortcut for regularly repeated words and phrases.

Fionna Agomuoh
Fionna Agomuoh
Computing Writer
Fionna Agomuoh is a Computing Writer at Digital Trends. She covers a range of topics in the computing space, including…
Topics
Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt
The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.
The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits. 

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price. 

Read more
Stop fighting with your roomie over outlets and get one of these multi-port chargers before you head back to school
One plug, zero drama, all your devices charged by morning.
Satechi ChargeView

Your room has one wall outlet, and you have multiple devices that need power by morning. Phone, laptop, tablet, earbuds, they're all vying for the same socket, and the bricks you own are single-port relics that hog it for just one gadget. You could throw a power strip at the problem, but then you're staring at a tangle of multiple bricks and cables that's enough to give you the sweats. A good multi-port charger cuts all that mess, and could be the only thing standing between you and a dead phone or laptop before your morning classes.

Back-to-school season is a smart time to buy one. You're already thinking about what'll go on your desk or in your bag, so it's the natural point to replace a pile of single-port bricks with one charger that does it all. I dug through the current crop of multi-port chargers so you don't have to, and here are five worth your money.

Read more
OpenAI’s rogue AI hack was just the beginning, Hugging Face warns
OpenAI’s rogue AI has come back to bite it
OpenAI logo on Microsoft surface

Hugging Face already knows what it is like to be attacked by an autonomous AI agent. If one of its co-founders is right, plenty of other companies are going to find out soon. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, has called the recent cyberattack carried out by OpenAI models a “wake-up call” for the technology industry.

Speaking to the BBC, Wolf warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed. This arrives after OpenAI disclosed that its models escaped a restricted cybersecurity evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face while trying to obtain answers for the ExploitGym benchmark. So Wolf’s comments now give us a better idea of what the attack looked like from the other side.

Read more