I love em dashes. You could say this is my love letter to the em dash. They’re fun. Useful—they bring a certain flair, call out a side note of importance, and just generally make me happy. It’s my favorite punctuation. (That is probably one of the most writer-ey writer things I can say, I know… but you have favorite punctuation, you know you do.) And if you don’t love the em dash, Grammarly gives you all the reasons you should.
It also annoys me that there isn’t often an easy way to add em dashes to whatever I’m writing, be it a blog post, a tweet or the next chapter. It used to be CTRL + ALT + (minus). That doesn’t work for me anymore. There is a quick way on the bigger laptops and keyboards: ALT + 0151 on the numeric keypad. But I have an Asus Zenbook now, a tiny, pretty little computer that does a lot and fits it in my purse 👜. It, however, does not have a numeric keypad on it.
I feel much the same about emojis. They just make me happy 😍 and I’m kind of the person who wants to add them to everything. (I resist about 1/4th of the time.)
There are also ways to go find them- getemoji.com for instance. But I want to add them in the moment, in a way that doesn’t interfere with my writing workflow. It’s important to add a good coffee emoji when I need one ☕ and be able to keep writing what I’m writing. Thankfully, there’s a shortcut for that.
How to add an emoji or an em dash on your Windows computer
Whatever you’re typing next, when the time comes to add in your em dash, find the Windows key on your keyboard – it looks like this:
Hold the Windows key and click the ; key. This window will pop up:
The first screen is your emoji list just start typing something like cupcake and then hit enter. The emoji will automatically pop into your text. 🧁 You’ll find the em-dash on the screen that shows “symbols.” Once you get to that screen, the em dash and the en dash are toward the bottom of the list.
And on a Mac…
For those of you on a Mac, I hear it’s pretty simple to get your em dashes when you want them: Hold the SHIFT and OPTION keys and press the minus key. And for the emojis, COMMAND+ CONTROL and space bar. But someone with a Mac will have to confirm or deny these rumors for me. 😉
Hope you enjoy the instant access to the em dash. And 🥂. Because why not?