If I use a hyphen (minus sign) in Word it automatically makes a dash of it, if followed by a empty space and then a character. However, when I hit enter, space twice, a hyphen, and starts to write, Word won’t make a dash out of it. (The same happens, or does not happen, if I hit two hyphens.)
I’ve been checking Word options (AutoCorrection) and tried different things back and forth, but I can’t get Word to make dash out of one or two hyphens in the beginning of a new line. Any suggestions?
I would suggest simply manually typing the dash. The keyboard shortcut for an em-dash in Microsoft Word is Ctrl + Shift + - (In other words, simultaneously press the Control key, the Shift key, and the minus sign.)
Thanks for your suggestion; it doesn’t seem to work in the beginning of a line. At first i autoformats, but when I say don’t do that, it stops, but there’s a minus, not a dash.
I find this most peculiar. If I’m writing a dialogue in MS Word, how am I supposed to do that, if I want to begin every reply with two blanks and then a hyphen?
Ok, what you can do is open “insert symbol” and find the dash sign. Mark it and click Keyboard Shortcut (I believe – my Word is Swedish). Remove the one that’s there (which is a bit cumbersome and won’t work very well on a typical laptop). Choose a for instance Ctrl±, instead. Also, remove that the autocorrection which makes a bulleted list out of any line beginning with a dash.
That’s an en dash. The easy way to do an em dash is to press Ctrl+Alt+minus (but use the minus key on the numeric keypad). This works at the beginning of a line.