[celsius1414]

On a Mac keyboard, Option-Shift-hyphen gives an em-dash. It’s muscle memory now after decades. For the true connoisseurs, Option-hyphen does an en-dash, mostly used for number ranges (e.g. 2000–2022). On iOS, double-hyphens can auto-correct to em-dashes.

I’ve definitely been reducing my day-to-day use of em-dashes the last year due to the negative AI association, but also because I decided I was overusing them even before that emerged.

This will hopefully give me more energy for campaigns to champion the interrobang (‽) and to reintroduce the letter thorn (Þ) to English.

[geerlingguy]

I'm always reminded how much simpler typography is on the Mac using the Option key when I'm on Windows and have to look up how to type [almost any special character].

Instead of modifier plus keypress, it's modifier, and a 4 digit combination that I'll never remember.

[projektfu]

PowerToys has a wonderful QuickAccent feature. The dashes and hyphens are on hyphen-KEY and some other characters are on comma-KEY, and many symbols are on the key that they resemble, like ¶ is on P-KEY where KEY is the follower key you want to use. I turned off using SPACE because it conflicted with some other software, but right arrow works great for me.

[cellis]

I've also used em-dashes since before chatgpt but not on HN -- because a double dash is easier to type. However in my notes app they're everywhere, because Mac autoconverts double dashes to em-dashes.

[derf_]

And on X, an em-dash (—) is Compose, hyphen, hyphen, hyphen. An en-dash (–) is Compose, hyphen, hyphen, period. I never even needed to look these up. They're literally the first things I tried given a basic knowledge of the Compose idiom (which you can pretty much guess from the name "Compose").

[stackghost]

Back in the heyday of ICQ, before emoji when we used emoticons uphill in the snow both ways, all the cool kids used :Þ instead of :P