EmDashify — -- → —

The Python library you think you'll never need—until you use it more than the ones you do.

Why?

LLMs made the em dash (—) hard to ignore. Pew Research Center found that em dashes appeared about twice as often in the English-language web text it studied as in 2023. An em dash is not proof of AI authorship; it's ordinary punctuation.

Yet most QWERTY keyboards have a - key, not a dedicated — key. EmDashify turns two easy hyphens into one proper em dash. No AI. Just punctuation.

Quick start

pip install emdashify
emdashify "Hello -- world"
# Hello — world

from emdashify import convert

convert("Hello -- world")             # 'Hello — world'
convert("hello--world", compact=True) # 'hello—world'

Word documents (.docx)

New in v0.2.0: convert an entire Word document, including paragraphs, tables, headers and footers, without flattening text formatting. Install the optional Word extra:

pip install "emdashify[word]"
emdashify --file draft.docx --output draft-fixed.docx
emdashify --file draft.docx --check

from emdashify import convert_docx

convert_docx("draft.docx", "draft-fixed.docx")

The original file is never overwritten. Word support is for .docx, not legacy .doc. Review complex documents with tracked changes or advanced Word fields after conversion.

Text and Markdown files

emdashify --file notes.md --diff
emdashify --file notes.md --output notes-fixed.md
emdashify --file notes.md --check

Safe by default: only standalone -- becomes —. Flags (--help), dates, and --- stay unchanged; Markdown code blocks are protected. Use --compact for word--word.

Requires Python 3.10+. For development or publishing, see release instructions.

License

BSD-3-Clause-Attribution. Redistributing EmDashify requires retaining license notices and this acknowledgment:

This product includes software developed by edujbarrios (https://github.com/edujbarrios/EmDashify).