This might be a stupid question but humor me . . .

[medjay]

When writing, I sometimes find the need to insert passages into the middle of sentences without using parenthesis or brackets. Dashs would fit much nicer.

When reading books, I always see sentences where long dashes are used quite effectively.

The problem is, on my keyboard, there seems to be only a short dash right next to the zero key. The long dash seems to be usable only as an underscore.

My question: Is it possible to use a long dash when typing on a keyboard or is this only a technique used by publishers? Is there a trick to using the long dash that I just don't know about? Have I overlooked some obvious key on my computer during all these years of writing?

Help, please!

 

[Devyne]

have you tried using repeated short dashes? i odntknwo about how it looks on your puter but on mine repeated short ones tend to look like one long one

 

[medjay]

I've tried that. Two short dashes look just like two short dashes--not quite what I had in mind.

 

[Devyne]

maybe its just that i have a small monitor then case that looks like a long line to me .. sorry i gave it a shot though LOL

 

[Weird Harold]

My question: Is it possible to use a long dash when typing on a keyboard or is this only a technique used by publishers? Is there a trick to using the long dash that I just don't know about?

The "Em-Dash" or long dash is usually formed by typing two hyphens. A good word processing program, like MS Word or WordPerfect can convert the two dashes to the special character that program uses to display and print an Em-Dash.

In MS Word, read the help menu entry on "Autocorrect" and "Autocomplete."

If you're planning on posting a story that uses Em-dashes, then leave it as two hyphens -- displaying a true Em-dash character with HTML is sometimes chancy and almost always requires special handling.

If you're submitting a story in a computer file format to a print publisher, how the Em-dash is handled will depend on the publisher's file format requirements -- you cannot use an Em-Dash in an ASCII text file (*.txt or *.asc) but you can use it in a MS Word document (*.doc) or WordPerfect file (*.wps).

 

[medjay]

Thanks, Weird Harold. Helpful as always.

 

[TheEarl]

AFAIK you can get a long dash by typing a short dash, followed by a space and then continuing to type. Autocorrect puts in a long dash on my computer.

The Earl

 

[Weird Harold]

AFAIK you can get a long dash by typing a short dash, followed by a space and then continuing to type. Autocorrect puts in a long dash on my computer.

The Earl

MS Word defaults to autocorrect two hyphens to an Em-Dash, but I think it depends on each individual program and the way it's configured as to how an Em-dash is produced.

For example, it would be possible to configure MS Word's autocorrect function to cause "ZQ" to generate an Em-dash and cause two hyphens to generate "Abracadabra".

As long as the user knows (and can remember) how the program they use generates an Em-dash, that's really all that's required.

 

[TheEarl]

Thanks Harold.

The Earl

 

[Coolville]

this message is an Emoticon free zone

if you use Word, go up to Insert, then Symbol. A box will come up with many symbols not on the keyboard. A longer dash should be there.

 

[Uther_Pendragon]

When the keyboard was invented (for the typewriter) there
weren't enough keys to express all the typesetting
conventions. So some new conventions were established.
For one, double hyphens were used for dashes.
Most of us, today, read a double hyphen as a dash.
That's what I would use -- indeed, that is what I do use.

 

[medjay]

Guess what? The long dash (or Em-Dash) was located in my special characters menu the whole time. For some reason I just never thought to look for it there. Thanks anyway, everyone, for all the comments.