Em dashes

<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 and double hyphen (--) both get 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>

<p>Try typing a space on each side of a hyphen.</p>