— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The humble em dash — where would we be without it? A favorite among the writers at Android Police, the em dash is used in place of several other punctuation marks, including commas, colons, parentheses, and quotation marks. It’s pretty damn handy, if I do say so myself. If you spend most of your time writing in Google Docs, you’re well aware of how difficult inserting an em dash can be — or, at least, how difficult it was. With a new shortcut, using every writer’s favorite tool just got a whole lot easier.
The Google Docs Twitter account announced the surprise arrival of a default autocorrection for the em dash today, using comedian Alexis Gay’s viral video about her love of the punctuation mark to mark the occasion. Previously, inserting an em dash into a document was pretty tricky. Copying and pasting or alt codes got the job done but never felt quite as satisfactory as hitting a button on a keyboard. Worst case scenario, it could even ruin your writing flow — something no one wants to happen to them.
Thankfully, our global nightmare is over. You can now tap the dash button on your keyboard three times to auto-generate an em dash — no extra steps necessary. And hey, if you’re one of those (wrong) people who use an en dash, you can also create one by typing two dashes. But you would never do that, right? Friends don’t let friends use en dashes.
Personally speaking, I’ve had an em dash set as a shortcut on my PC’s clipboard for as long as I can remember — especially after I ditched a keyboard with a number pad capable of entering alt codes. I’m excited to scrap my hacked-together method for generating my favorite punctuation mark with something a little easier to manage. With this change, one of my least favorite things about writing in Google Docs has all but disappeared.
Read Next
About The Author
