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

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650 points Stratoscope | 3 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.652s | source
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rappatic ◴[28 Mar 25 01:56 UTC] No.43500583[source]▶
I use em dashes all the time in writing, but unfortunately ChatGPT and co. use the em dash frequently—and most people use the em dash infrequently, not knowing how to type it on a keyboard—so it's starting to make my writing look AI-generated sometimes. I fear it'll have to go the way of words like "tapestry."

FWIW, you can type an em dash on Mac with shift + option + hyphen.

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1. fastball ◴[28 Mar 25 02:05 UTC] No.43500660[source]▶
I use them as well. For blog posts I suppose I'll need to switch to regular hyphens lest people think all my writing is LLM-spam.

That said, I don't even think you need the [shift] for em dash on Mac – just [option] + [hyphen] works for me.

replies(1): >>43500738 #
2. contact9879 ◴[28 Mar 25 02:18 UTC] No.43500738[source]▶
That's an en-dash
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3. fastball ◴[28 Mar 25 03:45 UTC] No.43501324[source]▶
Oh yeah, true. They look the exact same in the HN editor haha