symbol explained
Em Dash
The long dash used to break a sentence — like this.
- Unicode
- U+2014
- HTML entity
- —
Try Em Dash
Edit the text, then change the font and size.
The short answer
What does Em Dash mean?
The long dash used to break a sentence — like this. Editorial writing where a comma is too weak and a colon too formal.
Background
Where it comes from
The em dash is Unicode U+2014, historically as wide as the capital M of the type size in use. It is longer than the en dash – (U+2013) and the hyphen-minus -, and the three are not interchangeable in careful typesetting.
In conversation
How to use it
Editorial writing where a comma is too weak and a colon too formal. Copy the character itself when you need plain text that can be searched, selected and pasted like a letter.
Realistic examples
Em Dash in a sentence
“We shipped on Friday — barely.”
“The plan — and everyone agreed — was simpler.”
“One rule — keep it readable.”
Tone & nuance
What it communicates
A confident editorial pause. It breaks a sentence more sharply than a comma while staying less formal than a colon or a pair of parentheses.
Easily confused
Characters that look like —
These are separate characters. However similar they render, they sort, search and compare differently — which is why pasting the wrong one is so easy to miss.
En dash
U+2013
Half the width, and used for ranges: 1914–18. Substituting one for the other is the most common dash error there is.
Hyphen-minus
U+002D
The key on the keyboard. It joins compound words and is far too short to break a sentence.
Horizontal bar
U+2015
A quotation dash used to introduce dialogue in several languages. Longer, and not a sentence break.
For developers
— in code
Each value is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the symbol directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+2014 | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | — | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | — | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \2014 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{2014} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%80%94 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Common questions
Em Dash FAQ
What does the em dash — mean?
The long dash used to break a sentence — like this. Editorial writing where a comma is too weak and a colon too formal.
How do I type —?
The fastest way is the copy button on this page, which puts — on the clipboard on its own, without a label or a stray space. To insert it by hand, use the code point U+2014. In HTML you can write — instead of pasting the character. Windows Character Map and the macOS Emoji & Symbols viewer both let you search for it by name.
Will — look the same everywhere?
— is plain text, not an image, so it takes on the font, size and colour of the words around it while keeping the code point U+2014 wherever it is pasted. A font with limited coverage can substitute a different glyph or show an empty box, and some apps restyle certain symbols as coloured emoji, so preview it in the app and theme your readers will actually use.
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