Can't use em dashes nor two hyphens, any way to get around this?

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>My essay uses em dashes in three of its phrases, of which I consider the em dashes to be vital to how the sentence flows, but on both common app and UC, the em dash gets replaced with a regular hyphen. Is there a way to get around this? Should I just bold the single hyphen to illustrate that it's a longer pause?</p>

2

<p>I am having the same problem—why is this so difficult?</p>

3

<p>Bump!
Yes, I hope someone knows!</p>

4

<p>Bump, just googled this and found no answer</p>

5

<p>The common ap website says that this problem has been reported, but they don’t offer a solution.</p>

6

<p>This is ridiculous…</p>

7

<p>I was able to. When I did print preview it was fine. Just type “–”</p>

8

<p>I noticed the problem and ignored it. You’re not going to lose points over a formatting problem that admissions officers are almost certainly aware of.</p>

<p>I recommend everybody chill.</p>

9

<p>Can’t we simply copy the em dashes from a document into the common app?</p>

10

<p>You can, but check the preview PDF–it changes them to hyphens.</p>

11

<p>@Evan111 so should we put – or just put a - instead?</p>

12

<p>You really only have the choice of a hypen. It changes a pair of en dashes to a hyphen, too.</p>