[Tex/LaTex] Very long dashes in Victorian-era book

Question

I am trying to faithfully recreate the typographic style of a Victorian era book. One thing I've noticed is the extensive use of dashes: em-dashes are everywhere, for example.

Beyond the em dash however, I notice a set of even longer dashes. For example the dash used to indicate a pause in conversation due to a sudden interruption is about 1.5 times the length of an em dash. A similarly long dash is used to indicate the missing part of a name, e.g. "He traveled by horse to W—–".

How can I go about defining and working with dashes longer than an em dash. I can't seem to find any information on the web? I'm using XeLaTeX for my work.

Answer 1

You can superimpose two em-dashes:

\newcommand{\emmdash}{---\kern-0.5em---}

Full example:

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand{\emmdash}{---\kern-0.5em---}

\begin{document}

``He traveled by horse to W\emmdash”

-- --- \emmdash

\end{document}