no-emdash

A writing rule for using regular hyphens or paired dashes instead of the em dash character in Markdown and code comments.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps format documentation, comments, examples, and other Markdown text with the specified dash style.
Why use it?
It keeps dash usage consistent and prevents em dashes from appearing where they are not wanted.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/noteplan/plugins/no-emdash
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NotePlan/plugins

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 140 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 140 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00140 $0.00140
Opus 5 $0.00070 $0.00070
Sonnet 5 $0.00028 $0.00028
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00014

Measured yesterday against content hash a3a1d30ace05, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

no-emdash scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/no-emdash.mdc · 23 lines

What it actually says

Dash Style (No Emdash)

Do not use the emdash character () in markdown or code comments.

  • Use a single hyphen/dash (-) instead of an emdash.
  • Exception: for a mid-sentence subclause, use a pair of dashes with spaces: -- like this --.
<!-- ❌ BAD -->
Updated sorting — now respects priority markers.

<!-- ✅ GOOD -->
Updated sorting - now respects priority markers.

<!-- ✅ GOOD (subclause) -->
The filter -- when enabled -- hides completed items.
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 23 lines · 140 tokens per session scan A a3a1d30ace05

Subscribe to this mod's changes

no-emdash is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository NotePlan/plugins (204 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 140 tokens to every session, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.