How To Enter Hyphen On Word For Mac

Apple usb c macbook charger. Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change.

In this Article:Microsoft WordWindows Alt CodesMac OS XLinuxHTMLCommunity Q&A. When you are ready to enter your dash, use one of the following key.

More about Office • • • • Everyone knows what a hyphen is. It's the graphic character to the right of the 0 on your keyboard that connects two words or indicates that a word is wrapped to the next line at the right margin. What you might not know is that Word has other hyphen characters—characters that are more precise to context. In this article, you'll learn about the hyphen characters Word offers. You'll also learn when to use them and how to insert them into your Word documents.

I'm using Office 2016 on a Windows 64-bit system but almost everything you learn in this article will apply to earlier versions. You won't need a demonstration file to follow along.

SEE: The characters Table A shows the four hyphen characters we'll discuss in this article. We'll review their proper uses in punctuation and the methods for inserting them into your documents. Table A *Word refers to the minus character as a figure dash. Historically, all hyphen characters were represented by what some call the hyphen-minus character because typewriters only had one hyphen. More precise characters were limited to professionally typeset publications. In the digital age, we can use the correct symbols, but because we're so familiar with the hyphen-minus character, it persists as the character used most often to: • Create compound words (hyphen) • Combine adjectives when neither can stand alone (hyphen) • Break a word that wraps to the next line at the right margin (hyphen) • Connect grouped numbers, such as a phone number or a social security number (hyphen) • Indicate a negative numeric value (minus) • Indicate a subtraction operation (minus).

Most of the time, we use the same character to do all of the above, but technically, there's a subtle difference between a hyphen and a minus sign: The minus sign has more leading between itself and the adjacent characters and sits higher horizontally. Now that you know the difference, there's no reason not to use the hyphen and minus characters properly. Let's move on to the en and em dashes, also known as n and m dashes. Their names are actually a description: The en dash is the width of an uppercase N; the em dash is the width of an uppercase M. As you might expect, the em dash is wider than the en dash.

When it matters, use the en dash to join numbers in a range, such as 2015-2016 and September-October 2016. Use the em dash to separate a unique thought from the main clause of a sentence. (This is a personal favorite.) It's more intense than a comma, but less abrupt than a period. How to insert Now that you're familiar with the four hyphen characters, you'll want to know how to insert them. Throughout the rest of this article, I will reference each character using the names from Table A: hyphen, minus, en, and em.

The simplest way to insert a hyphen is to use the key to the right of the 0 character. The others require a bit more work. To fill Table A, I used the Unicode method to insert all four characters in the Example column. Simply type the code and then press [Alt]+X; Word will convert the code if the code stands alone.

If no space character separates the code from other characters, select the code first and then press [Alt]+X. You can also use the Insert tab as follows: • Click Insert, click Symbol in the Symbols group, and choose More Symbols ( Figure A).

• In the resulting dialog, choose (normal text) from the Font dropdown. Word defaults to the ASCII code and the characters are sorted accordingly, which can help you find the right hyphen if you know its code. The selected character in Figure B is the hyphen. If your dialog selects something different, don't worry; this feature remembers what you chose last. It also displays the currently selected character in your document. Either situation could apply.

• You can also rely on the Unicode to insert the appropriate character by choosing Unicode (hex) from the From dropdown ( Figure C). • To insert the selected character, click Insert. Figure A Use the Symbols group to insert hyphen characters.