Dash, en dash, and em dash

Fidus Writer development
1

Is there a shortcut for inserting an en or em dash?

2

Not currently. There are some text editors that automatically convert three minuses (—) into an em-dash and two into an en-dash. Auto-correcting can at times be annoying if it is doing that against the wishes of the user.
However, maybe this case is so special that we could add such a short-cut without annoying too many people in a future version. Maybe just by creatying a “Insert special symbols” menu with shortcuts to the various entries.

Also, there is some new work in the W3C concrning emoji picker and I see that both of those are accessible through emoji selectors on Windows, so maybe that will end up being another way.

In the meantime, some instructions for how to do it depending on your OS:

Linux/Ubuntu:
Em-dash

  1. Shift+control+u
  2. Type 2014
  3. Type enter

En-dash

  1. Shift+control+u
  2. Type 2013
  3. Type enter

Mac OS

Em-dash
Shift-option-hyphen

En-dash
Option-hyphen

Windows

Em-dash
Alt + 0151

En-dash
Alt + 0150

3

Thanks, that is very helpful (Linux/Ubuntu is the one relevant to me). I agree that auto-correct is irritating as a feature on a lot of text editors but it would be useful to have an “Insert special symbols” menu with shortcuts to the various entries that you suggest. Thanks again.