I'm a professional writer. I've been steadily weaning myself off MS Word, but I can't figure how to make Pages create an automatic "em dash" or even create one manually. In Word, if I hit the dash ( - ) key twice, the program would create a longer, joined dash ( the "em" dash) to join the two words with no space.
I'm certain Pages must have a way to do this, but I've been unable to find it.
Any help is deeply appreciated.
Have you tried option-hyphen (en), shift-option-hyphen (em)?
Hi Bb,
In any application, directly from the keyboard:
hyphen: -
en dash: – option+-
em dash: — shift + option + -
In Pages, you can also set an automatic character substutition similar to your MS Word practice:
One possible difference: The substitution doesn't occur until the character following the "--" is typed, AND requires that that character be a space or one of several punctuation characters. As em dashes are often (always?) tight to other characters, using character substitution may require a change in the work flow involving a type and delete patternn timed to allow the substitution to take place.
Regards,
Barry
How can I have Pages automatically create an em dash?
