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by shmerl 292 days ago
What's wrong with em dashes? Use whatever you like.

Compose --- should produce —

For en dash it's

Compose --. produces –

Not all fonts show the difference though.

1 comments

The article wasn't really about that...
Suggestion that humans don't use symbols like em dash is based on the possible difficulty to use them. The reason is probably because many never used / heard of the Compose key. It's not hard to do it once you learn about it.
I don't think it's because they are mechanically difficult to use as you imply, but rather that they are subtler or more nuanced symbols than most people know how to use.

A lot of people are comfortable using the dot, the comma, and maybe exclamation marks.

AI-speech seems to strive for more formal writing by default.

May be, but mechanical difficulty adds to less usage too.