alt Hacker NewsWhere's the emdash key on your keyboard?
There isn't one?
Oh, maybe that's why people who didn't already know or care about emdashes are very alert to their presence.
If you have to do something very exotic with keypresses or copypaste from a tool or build your own macro to get something like an emdash, or , it's going to stand out, even if it's an integral part of standard operating systems.
Replies
Exotic? At least in every microsoft product i.e. word, outlook, etc. that I’ve had to use for school and business for the last couple decades does it automatically just by typing “—-“.
> Where's the emdash key on your keyboard?
The dash key is right between the "0" and the "="
Press it twice and just about every word processing program in existence will turn it into an emdash.
My German keyboard has umlaut keys: üäö. I use them daily. I was told that in other parts of the World, people don't have umlaut keys, and have to use combos like ⌥U + a/o/u.
Boy, I sure hope they don't think me an AI.
Just because many people have no idea how to use type certain characters on their devices shouldn't mean we all have to go along with their superstitions.
Where’s the copy paste key on your keyboard? Oh, there isn’t one? How could anyone possibly use this then?
> Where's the emdash key on your keyboard?
> There isn't one?
Mac, alt-minus. Did by accident once, causing confusion because Xcode uses monospace font where -, – and — look identical, and an m-dash where a minus should be gets a compiler error.
iOS, long-press on the "-" key.
standby for the masses to drop the nerd-equivalent of "before it was cool" comments in 3...2...
hyphen + space in microsoft word will often (depends on your settings) produce an em dash. It’s not some crazy hidden feature.
These days word is less popular though, with google docs, pages, and other editors taking pieces of the pie. Maybe that’s where the skepticism comes from.
> There isn't one?
I've used em-dash since I got my first MacBook in 2008.
- Option + minus gives you en-dash
- Option + Shift + minus gives you em-dash
It quickly becomes automatic (as are a bunch of other shortcuts). Here's a question about this from 2006: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/377843
shift-option-dash
Shift-option-minus on a Mac, just like how shift-option-8 is the degree symbol and option-slash is the division symbol.
My computer converts -- into an emdash automatically. Been using it since 2011. Sorry you've been missing out on a part of the English language all this time.
Typing hyphen-hyphen-space is hardly exotic — I've been doing that since well beyond the advent of generative AI.