Typing typographic characters on a Mac
Every dash, quote and symbol worth using has an Option-key combination or lives two keystrokes away in the Character Viewer. The full crib sheet.
macOS has the best keyboard access to typographic characters of any system: most of them sit under the Option key. The combinations below are for the U.S. keyboard layout — other layouts move them around (open Keyboard Viewer under the input menu to see yours).
Dashes and the ellipsis
| Character | Keys | |
|---|---|---|
| En dash | – |
Option + hyphen |
| Em dash | — |
Option + Shift + hyphen |
| Ellipsis | … |
Option + ; |
Quotation marks and the apostrophe
| Character | Keys | |
|---|---|---|
| Apostrophe, closing single | ’ |
Option + Shift + ] |
| Opening single | ‘ |
Option + ] |
| Opening double | “ |
Option + [ |
| Closing double | ” |
Option + Shift + [ |
| Guillemets | « » |
Option + \ and Option + Shift + \ |
| Single guillemets | ‹ › |
Option + Shift + 3 and Option + Shift + 4 |
| Low double (German, Ukrainian nested) | „ |
Option + Shift + W |
| Low single | ‚ |
Option + Shift + 0 |
Spaces, signs and symbols
| Character | Keys | |
|---|---|---|
| No-break space | Option + Space | |
| Degree | ° |
Option + Shift + 8 |
| Plus-minus | ± |
Option + Shift + = |
| Not equal | ≠ |
Option + = |
| Division | ÷ |
Option + / |
| Euro | € |
Option + Shift + 2 |
| Pound | £ |
Option + 3 |
| Yen | ¥ |
Option + Y |
| Copyright | © |
Option + G |
| Registered | ® |
Option + R |
| Trademark | ™ |
Option + 2 |
| Section | § |
Option + 6 |
| Pilcrow | ¶ |
Option + 7 |
| Bullet | • |
Option + 8 |
| Dagger | † |
Option + T |
One trap: Option + K gives ˚, the ring above accent, which looks like a degree sign and is not one. The degree sign is Option + Shift + 8.
Everything else: the Character Viewer
The multiplication sign ×, the true minus −, the primes ′ ″ and the arrow → have no Option combination. Press Control + Command + Space (or choose Edit → Emoji & Symbols), type the character’s name, and double-click it. The viewer keeps a frequently-used list, so the second time is faster.
Or stop memorising
A crib sheet is the manual approach. The reason this site exists: paste your text into the playground — or run the engine in your build — and the straight marks you actually typed become the right characters, by language, with 33 documented rules. The combinations above are still worth knowing for the odd character in a chat message; for anything you publish, let software set it.
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