How to Type En-Dash or Em-Dash Quickly in Google Docs

We all know about Google Docs which is a free online document processor available to anyone who has a free Google account. Since all Android device users have to create or use an already existing Google account, it is available to all the Android smartphone owners in the form of an app. Basically, it can do everything Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer can. It has an added advantage of the cloud storage – all the document created or uploaded by the user stay in the cloud and we can access them from anywhere at any time.

Google keeps adding and updating features in Google Docs. Recently they have added a few features such as easier insertion of a few typographic characters. They have finally resolved the age old problem of typing a dash instead of a hyphen.

Until now, if you had to type a dash in Google Docs, then you had to either open up character insertion menu and find the right character or copy-paste it from somewhere else such as the Character Map tool in Windows. But now Google has made the process so easy, that anyone can type a dash in a fraction of a second.

Google Docs - Enter Dash Easily

So here is how you can type a dash in a jiffy: all you have to do is type a hyphen a number of times. This means that you have to press the hyphen key (also called the minus sign key, the one next to number 0 on your keyboard) 2 or 3 times and it will turn into a dash. You can also use the minus key on the num-pad.

If you press the minus key 2 times, it becomes an en-dash. If you press the minus key 3 times, it becomes an em-dash. En-dash is longer than a hyphen but shorter than em-dash. So this is how you can save your time and easily enter hyphen, en-dash or em-dash in Google Docs. En-dash is also called small pause and em-dash is called long pause.