How to write en and em dashes?

Question

I understand that to be able to type en and em dashes I have to configure the COMPOSE key, or something like that, but I am not sure about that nor on how I get from there to be able to type en and em dashes in addition to the minus sign.

How do I type en and em dashes on Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 with GNOME 3.18?

I have now looked at this answer, so I would now also like to know the code for the en dash and how to assign other keyboard shortcuts to these Unicode characters, as I don't want to have to type something too long in order to get these.

Solution 1

You need to learn the Unicode numbers of these two characters. They are not actually hard to remember, because they look like years. ;)

• En dash: U+2013
• Em dash: U+2014

To write a Unicode symbol, perform the following actions:

• Press Ctrl+Shift+U (the display will show something like u̲)
• Type the code (e.g. 2014)
• Press Enter

There you go: – —

For a complete reference to Unicode characters, run gucharmap.

Solution 2

When I look up "em dash" on the gnome 3 overview a result comes up that puts it on the clipboard. I think you need to have gnome-characters installed for it to work.

Solution 3

(As a complementary answer.)

This is layout-dependent. For example, in English (US) keyboard:

• Compose and then --. gives –

• Compose and then --- gives —.

But if I change keyboard layout to Romanian (standard) that stops working (maybe because my Compose key is AltGr). What works then (without Compose key) is this:

• Alt+Shift+- gives –

• Alt+Shift+-- gives —

But this is also dependent on the text editor. In LibreOffice Writer one can use :--: and :---:.

Comments

[muru]

Possible duplicate of How can I type a unicode character (for example, em-dash —?)

[Andrea Lazzarotto]

Gosh, I just wrote the same thing in an answer. :D

[muru]

Eh, search the character map?

[muru]

Also, did you see askubuntu.com/a/585133/158442?

[Frank Nocke]

The em-dash —... has its own, direct shortcut. alt--, at least under Ubuntu-MATE