I always find it strange how many HN commenters appear to have unconsciously added "exclusively" or "without exception" to the text of the comment they're replying to.
"option shift -" like so —, or if you want an en-dash, just "option -" like –. The funny bit is that I like em-dashes too as they indicate a pause or an interruption in thinking that just looks better than parenthesis, however I sometimes like to use en-dashes as well, which can be a pain since some fonts, especially monospaced ones, render exactly the same, for example in this HN edit box: - – —
I, at least, literally made my own keyboard layout some years ago, to be able to type all the characters I want. Got versions both for Linux and Windows (haven't had a need to use Mac yet).
It's basically an extension of US International which can type every letter in all the Latin based alphabets and most of the common punctuations, including hyphens, hyphen-minuses, en-dashes, and em-dashed.
Never found room for all the Greek letters, though.
I'm typing from a phone and it's just a long press on the - button to get — to appear. How about if you're not foreign, how do you get æ to appear. It seems quite special to get € or ¥ to apper if all you've got is $ but why should your inability too do something hold back everyone else?
I was downvoted a few weeks ago for making this exact point. Humans can and do use em-dashes occasionally, but given that you have to go digging for the key combination, you're not using it every 3rd sentence like every AI model does.
> but given that you have to go digging for the key combination
Except you don’t. If you’re on an Apple OS, by default doing -- (two hyphens) auto-substitutes for an em-dash.
Also, the key combination isn’t even hard. Depending on the layout you’re using, it’s either ⌥- or ⌥⇧-. My fingers press that (and the appropriate combination for apostrophes too) without me having to think. Those ⌥ and ⇧ symbols (and many more) I have mapped to text snippets.
We’re using computers, these things are trivial to do and customise, you don’t have to “hunt” for anything.
Yeah, yeah, people say that all the time. But it's not the dash itself, it's how it's so stiff and obviously not written by a human. "No screen glow, no keyboard, no chat UI." and other bullshit.
Why should I waste time reading this link, when the "author" themselves didn't write and, probably not even read it themselves.