KNOWLEDGEBASE - ARTICLE #1328

Entering a wide em-dash and en-dash in Prism.

Prism lets you enter four different widths of hyphens or dashes when adding text to a graph or layout. 

  • The ordinary, short, hyphen or minus sign.  When you use the hyphen character with most fonts (Arial, Times Roman), this is what you get.  In fact, the hyphen and minus sign can be considered different characters, but not in Prism.
  • A wider hyphen is called an  en-dash. To enter an en-dash with Prism Windows: Type a regular dash and select it. Now drop the font menu and choose the Symbol font. Or hold down the left Alt key and type 0150 on the numeric keypad. For Mac: Hold down the Option key and press the hyphen key.
  • An even wider hyphen is called an  em-dash (because the letter m is wider than the letter n). To enter an em-dash with Prism Windows: Hold down the left Alt key and type 0151 on the numeric keypad. For Mac hold down both the Option and Shift key and press the hyphen key.
  • A super wide dash. To enter with Prism: put the insertion point into a text object or title where you want the dash, click the insert symbol button (with an alpha on it), go to the Math tab, and then double click on the wide dash in the second row of characters.

Notes:

  • Click here to read more about using special characters and symbols with Prism.
  • On Mac, en- and em-dashes can also be inserted via the Character Viewer panel. To access the panel, hold down both the Control key and the Option key and press the spacebar, or select "Emoji & Symbols" from the Edit menu. The symbols can be found in the 'Punctuation' section, or by using the search feature.
  • The tips above work for writing text on a graph or layout, not in row and column titles.
  • Prism's equation editor will be confused by n and m dashes. Use the regular hyphen as a minus sign. 
  • When is it correct to use the hyphen, en dash and em dash?
  • More info in Wikipedia.


Keywords: wide hyphen, wide dash, --, m dash, m hyphen, m-dash, m-hyphen, em-hyphen, m-rule, n-rule, m rule, n rule

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