There's an easy keyboard shortcut for it on Macs. I always saw it as a signifier of "Mac user with enough interest in writing style to use em-dashes instead of parentheses."

But I'm not on a Mac right now so I don't know how to even make a real one at the moment other than that LaTeX method.

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machinate 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Easy is almost an understatement; it's Alt+Hyphen. [Edit: My bad that's en-dash, can't tell the difference in this monospaced text field. Em-dash you have to hold shift.]

I guess on Windows it's Alt+0,1,5,1 on a numpad. Or you copy+paste from Character Map.

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e28eta 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

To be pedantic: Opt-shift-hyphen for the em dash (longer one). Opt-hyphen only gets you an en dash.

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9dev 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

…which is the appropriate character for ranges, i.e., page 1–2.

I find it a bit sad that using proper typography is now frowned upon, but it seems that ship has sailed.

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Symbiote 6 days ago | parent [-]

From the discussion with our head of communications (whose pedantry I approve of) US usage avoids spaces—like this—and should use an em-dash.

But British usage – instead – uses spaces, so an en-dash or an em-dash is acceptable.

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d1sxeyes 6 days ago | parent [-]

Generally spaces around em-dashes is a question of style, not pre- or pro-scribed by any specific typographical rule. One nice middle ground is a hair space (&hairsp;), although it’s a pain to insert.

	▲	1659447091 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> spaces around em-dashes is a question of style, not pre- or pro-scribed by any specific typographical rule Writing and publishing style guides like Hart's Rules (Oxford Style Guide) & Chicago manual of style have the 'em' dash use as a parenthetical closed or "no spaces" dash. In British use – Hart's Rules – writers will choose the 'en' dash with spaces as a parenthetical dash, where US writers/publishers choose the closed 'em' dash for the same thing. Imo, there is a conflation of 'en' dash and 'em' dash going around due to the ease of smart-dashes auto-correction turning (--) into 'em' dash with the 'en' dash and non-auto-correct 'em' dash needing a key-combo. Common everyday typing online, I think people will simply use what is convenient and "good enough" -- a single hyphen dash as an 'en' dash or 2-hyphen dashes that may or may not auto correct into an 'em' dash. I prefer mixing spaces with a 2-hyphen dash 'em' dash, but I'm not a published writer so I enjoy doing wild things like that
	▲	andrewaylett 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I configured my Markdown renderer to replace ` -- ` with " — ". Hopefully those narrow spaces make it through HN's rendering — it's much easier when your tooling can do the job for you. https://github.com/andrewaylett/aylett.co.uk/blob/d338d35a3d...

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saagarjha 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One of the reasons I'm not on that page–I have a policy of using en dashes because I am lazy

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machinate 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Right, you sniped my edit. I don't know why I gave up my hn delay setting...

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SAI_Peregrinus 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or you've had WinCompose installed for years and type Compose+hyphen+hyphen+hyphen. — is easy to type that way. The same works for Linux with a compose key enabled, WinCompose is a program to give Windows a compose key, and comes with default sequences including those found by default in most distro's XCompose list.

	▲	etra0 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Big shout-out to WinCompose, it's the only way I found my keyboard usable while being bilingual :)

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notpushkin 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You can install a custom layout on Windows, like the one I made: https://typo.ale.sh/

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Freak_NL 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not just Apple users. The compose-key does this on a variety of desktop operating systems, where the shortcut is COMPOSE - - - for em-dash, and - - . for en-dash.

	▲	layer8 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Alternatively, Compose 2 - for en dash and Compose 3 - for em dash.

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Hamuko 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Another one is … instead of ...