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.
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
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.
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