How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

This test feels biased by the fact that, like others have said, macOS provides keyboard shortcuts. For example, I'm only Gen Z and yet have tried for many years to use the proper dash characters in the right places, which is made much easier by virtue of being on a Mac.

Of course, I guess it's entirely possible—even accounting for OS—that this test remains statistically useful. It makes me kinda sad that my (very much human-generated) writing fails the Turing test....

The compose key, for those who use it, also makes it very easy to do em/en dashes, and I use them quite regularly as a result.

On iPhone, type two hyphens to make an em dash:

-- into —

If OP wrote their post on an iPhone, they would have inadvertently appeared as an LLM by their own test.

That has nothing to do with being on a Mac. Em-dashes and the compose-key work fine on Linux, and Android has them under the '-' of the on-screen keyboard when long-pressed.

(Windows probably has some way, but those are rarely discoverable.)

That's true, I do use them a lot on iOS as well—similarly, it's a long-press on '-' to get an en or em dash.

Does that become an en dash if it's between two numbers?

You can also hold the hyphen key to select an en dash.

I disagree, there is absolutely no easy way to do it on Windows. You can install a third party program that emulates the compose key but on macos it "just works". And I think that makes a difference for 95% of users

Came to say this as well. I use the compose key to write em dashes and other symbols on a daily basis. Very handy!

I hate that this feature doesn't have a timeout, so when you want to type "--" you have to "- -" and then go back and delete the space. You can't just wait as with double-space vs space-wait-space. It can be turned off, but that turns off other locale-based punctuation like quotes.

Install PowerToys, hold dash and then press space. This works for all the variants for any keyboard character.

Windows does too now via Windows+. which opens the "emoji keyboard" but you can switch to the "symbols" tab to see unicode. It does have multiple dashes in the quick access bar at the top or you can search.

Hit Windows+. click on the "Symbols" tab and they're right there under general punctuation.

Released back in 2019 for Windows 10.

It does indeed! One of my favourite iOS keyboard features.

`misc:typo` is easier

I've used WinCompose¹² to add key composition to Windows for many years (after discovering the concept in Unix-land), which I still find more convenient than the other options I've tried (including the Windows Emoji keyboard).

----

[1] https://wincompose.info/

[2] Though having checked just now, the sequences for en-dash and em-dash don't seem to be working. Perhaps one of my custom macros is interfering somehow… (it is behaving overall, ellipsis just worked as did the following diacritic and other symbols: áèîöūñ±⁰¹²∞¡¿‽π⬚). I'll have to poke at it later and see what is ary.

I've always (well...for 20 years) done a Google search for "em-dash" then copy/paste the character off whatever result page come up. Word and other fancy editors always provided a popup pane where these characters could be clicked to insert.

It's a bit funny. On macOS en and em dashes can be natively typed with alt+- and alt+shift+-. The responses to your comment are apparently suggesting these methods are just as easy as that:

1. Install and configure this extra tool, which also by default enables a ton of other things you may not want, and may as well be a third-party tool even though it's technically built by Microsoft

2. Do a Google search and copy-paste (!)

3. Use a keyboard shortcut to bring up a symbol picker, then click on the tab containing the en and em dashes, then click to type them in

I mean, come on.

EURKEY layout in particular has them easily accessible.

yeah, this is exactly my point haha. these are not at all the same