[waterhouse]

I learned how to type em-dashes on Mac (option-shift-hyphen) 10+ years ago and have been using them with some frequency since then. Picking 2023, here are some comments with emdashes that I personally typed:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796943
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916740
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125055
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487782

[pmarreck]

I have a Mac (and am very familiar with all its nifty shortcuts) but also a Windows and Linux machine, how would one type it on those?

[cpeterso]

To enter an em dash on Windows, hold down Alt and type 0 1 5 1 on your keyboard’s numpad. (Alt 0 1 5 0 for an en dash.) This only works with numpad number keys so laptop users are out of luck.

[pmarreck]

It is insane that in 2025, this is an accepted way to type lesser-used characters on Windows still, when the Mac has had the Option key typing umlauts and em-dashes extremely simply (an umlauted U is literally option-u, u... Ironically, I'm currently on a Windows machine so I cannot even type it) literally since 1984.

My family is German (I'm firstborn American) so this was a huge sell for the Mac way back then

Sad to see that Windows is still stuck in the PS/2 days here

[beAbU]

If you install Power Toys, you get a feature called "Quick Accent" which gives you a shortcut to get basically any symbol quickly. Hold down the key that's the most like the one you are looking for, and press space. A little menu pops up where you can cycle through all the variants.

So `- + space` brings up a menu with all the "dashy" characters. There's 12 of them!

There is also `Win + .` which brings up an emoji menu, where you can also access the symbols list.

[sunshowers]

The compose key works well on Linux. Typically mapped to right alt, compose-hyphen-hyphen-hyphen produces an em dash. (hyphen-hyphen-period produces an en dash.)

[pmarreck]

That's at least halfway between the difficulty of it on Mac and Windows.

[ansgri]

Given the compose sequences are mnemonic, I’d prefer it over Mac every time. Compare Compose+<< and >> for «» to Opt+[ and Opt+Sh+[ on Mac. Which may or may not work depending on locale.

[sunshowers]

Not really. Maybe 20%.

[dialup_sounds]

Word and Outlook auto-replace double hyphens "--" with em-dashes "—", which is probably the most commonly used way on Windows.

[pmarreck]

Yeah, but that's not global. Mac has global keyboard entries for these things, and they are incredibly easy.