The long and short of it

[aitch]

Hello,

Would someone out there please put me right on what I call hyphens and
dashes (these to me being a bit longer). I know that the word 'em' comes in
here somewhere.

I am using Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Vista and just the - is on the
keyboard but it's big brother is in symbols, not always the most convenient
place.

Can I access the 'dash' through the keyboard as I can the 'hyphen'?

Thank you,

Aitch

 

[Jay Freedman]

There are actually at least three different sizes. The hyphen you see
on the keyboard is the shortest one. The next size is an 'en dash',
which is often used in compound phrases where one of the parts is
itself a hyphenated pair of words. The longest one is the 'em dash',
used to separate clauses in a sentence. The names come from the fact
that in most fonts the en dash is the same width as the letter N, and
the em dash is the same width as the letter M.

The article http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/InsertSpecChars.htm
explains two ways to insert the dashes from the keyboard: with the
built-in shortcut keys Ctrl+Num- for an en dash and Alt+Ctrl+Num- for
an em dash; or by using the AutoFormat As You Type feature.

There are at least three more ways, although two of them are even more
inconvenient than the symbol dialog.

- The en dash is ASCII character number 150 and the em dash is
character number 151. So you can hold down the Alt key while typing
the digits 0150 or 0151 on the number pad. The dash appears when you
release the Alt key.

- In Unicode fonts, the en dash is character number 2013 and the em
dash is character number 2014. So you can type the number into the
document and then press Alt+X to convert it to the corresponding dash.

- If you aren't happy with the default shortcuts, you can assign your
own. In the Symbol dialog, select the dash and click the Shortcut Key
button. Use the Shortcut dialog to assign whatever combination you
prefer, in addition to or instead of the default.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[aitch]

Many thanks Jay. That seems to give me all I need.

H