Em Dash Usage

Editor's Notes

• #2: Em dashes are really important and many people don’t know how or when to use them.In this presentation, I’m going to talk about how to insert an em dash in Word documents.
• #3: To insert an em dash in a Word document or email—assuming you are using a Word 2007 or 2010 -- click on Insert in the main menu. On the right side of the Insert menu is an icon that looks like a horseshoe. The em dash may be displayed in the list of recently used symbols or you might have to click on More Symbols at the bottom of the Symbol menu.
• #4: After you click on More Symbols, you’ll notice two tabs, one for Symbols and the other for Special Characters.Choose the Special Characters tabs.A long is list Special Characters is then displayed and at the top is the all important em dash.Also displayed on the list is the Shortcut Key for inserting an em dash.The shortcut key assigned by Microsoft of Alt + Ctl + NumBut you may have troubled remembering that. So you can create your own shortcut key.Simply click on the Shortcut Key button.
• #5: After you click on the shortcut key button, you’ll see a dialog box that looks like this.Then, simply input the shortcut keys you want to use to insert an em dash.For example, I input the Ctrl + Shift + Num keys and clicked on Assign, which sets that combination of keys to insert an en emdash ion the future.I just press down on Shift and Ctrl at tand then hit the Underscore key. That inserts a dash in my Word documents.Annoyingly, you’ll need to also go through this process to save a shortcut key for writing emails. You assign the shortcut key in Outlook the same way as in Word. You can assign the same shortcut keys for inserting an em dash in emails that you use in Word.