En Dash on Mac: The Complete Guide (Shortcut, Menu, and Text Expansion)

You need an en dash, not an em dash, and you’re not entirely sure which shortcut is which. You’re not alone. The en dash and em dash look almost identical and have nearly identical keyboard shortcuts on Mac, which means most people mix them up constantly.

Let’s sort this out once.

En dash vs em dash vs hyphen

Before we get to the shortcut, here’s the quick version of which dash is which:

The en dash is named after the letter “n” because it’s roughly the width of a lowercase n. The em dash is the width of an m. The hyphen is the shortest of the three.

If you’re writing about a range of numbers, dates, or scores, you want the en dash. If you’re breaking up a sentence with an aside, you want the em dash. If you’re joining two words together, you want the hyphen.

The keyboard shortcut

On Mac, press Option + Minus to type an en dash.

That’s the minus/hyphen key on the top row, between 0 and =. Hold Option, press minus, and you get –.

Here’s where the confusion happens: the em dash shortcut is Option + Shift + Minus. Same keys, but you add Shift. People mix them up because the shortcuts are one modifier key apart.

A quick way to keep them straight: the longer dash (em dash) needs the longer shortcut (more keys). Option + Minus gives you the shorter en dash. Option + Shift + Minus gives you the longer em dash.

Other methods

Character Viewer

If you’d rather not memorize shortcuts, you can find the en dash in the Character Viewer:

1. Click in any text field where you want to insert the character
2. Go to Edit → Emoji & Symbols in the menu bar (or press Control + Command + Space)
3. Type “en dash” in the search field
4. Double-click the en dash character to insert it

This works in any app, but it’s slow. You’re opening a panel, searching, clicking — not ideal when you’re in the middle of writing.

The autocorrect quirk

macOS autocorrect will sometimes convert a double hyphen (--) into an em dash in certain apps like Pages and TextEdit. But it won’t auto-convert anything into an en dash. There’s no automatic shortcut for the en dash built into macOS autocorrect, which means you’re stuck either memorizing Option + Minus or using the Character Viewer.

Unless you set up text expansion.

The text expansion approach

Here’s the thing about Option + Minus vs Option + Shift + Minus: even if you memorize them today, you’ll second-guess yourself next week. Was it Option + Minus for the en dash, or Option + Shift + Minus?

A text expansion app removes the guesswork entirely. In TypeSnap, you could set up:

• ;en expands to – (en dash)
• ;em expands to — (em dash)

Type ;en, get an en dash. Type ;em, get an em dash. No modifier keys, no confusion between the two shortcuts. The trigger itself tells you which dash you’re getting.

This matters more than it sounds. If you write professionally — blog posts, documentation, reports — you’re reaching for these characters regularly. A two-character trigger that you chose yourself is always going to be easier to remember than Apple’s arbitrary key combination.

When to actually use the en dash

Now that you can type it, here’s when you should:

Date ranges: 2020–2026, March–June, Monday–Friday

Number ranges: pages 12–18, $50–$75, ages 18–25

Scores and results: Giants 4–3 Dodgers, the vote was 52–48

Compound modifiers with multi-word elements: New York–based company, Nobel Prize–winning physicist, pre–World War II architecture

That last category is the one most people miss. When one side of a compound modifier is already two words, you use an en dash instead of a hyphen. “New York-based” with a hyphen is technically wrong; “New York–based” with an en dash is correct.

Stop looking it up

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably searched for the en dash shortcut before. Maybe more than once. The fastest way to stop looking it up is to create a text expansion snippet that makes the shortcut obvious.

Set up ;en and ;em in TypeSnap, and the en dash vs em dash question is solved permanently. Both dashes, always available, in every app on your Mac. One-time purchase, no subscription — just type your trigger and move on with your writing.