alt Hacker NewsHow do you type the em dash. I thought the point about the em dash "—" is, that it is longer than the normal minus "-". Humans normally have no way to produce it, cause there is no key on the keyboard.
Replies
Many word processors (Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, etc.) and some online editors will auto convert double hyphens "--" as they are typed into an em dash.
Macos, ios, google docs, and microsoft word will autocorrect two hyphens to an em dash, which is how I normally type it. On a mac you can also type an em dash with option-shift-hyphen.
Being Hacker News, a lot of us use programmable IDEs & keyboards. I added em dash support to both Emacs and Dygma keyboard.
At least in macOS there is a key for that on the keyboard, Shift + Option + Hyphen (-). This information is a quick internet search away.
dash dash "--" on a lot of systems and word processors turns it into the em-dash automatically
Some text editors replace the -- (two separate dashes) with a proper em-dash. Literate people - who understand why em dash exists - have been using it all the time. Thats, after all, how the models learned to use it.