You are absolutely right — most internet users don't know the specific keyboard combination to make an em dash and substitute it with two hyphens. On some websites it is automatically converted into an em dash. If you would like to know more about this important punctuation symbol and it's significance in identitifying ai writing, please let me know.

▲

d4rkp4ttern 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wow thanks for the enlightenment. I dug into this a bit and found out:

Hyphen (-) — the one on your keyboard. For compound words like “well-known.”

En dash (–) — medium length, for ranges like 2020–2024. Mac: Option + hyphen. Windows: Alt + 0150.

Em dash (—) — the long one, for breaks in thought. Mac: Option + Shift + hyphen. Windows: Alt + 0151.

And now I also understand why having plenty of actual em-dashes (not double hyphens) is an “AI tell”.

▲

wincy 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And Em Dash is trivially easy on iOS — you simply hold press on the regular dash button - I’ve been using it for years and am not stopping because people might suddenly accuse me of being an AI.

▲

FridayoLeary 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks for that. I had no idea either. I'm genuinely surprised Windows buries such a crucial thing like this. Or why they even bothered adding it in the first place when it's so complicated.

▲

jsheard 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Windows version is an escape hatch for keying in any arbitrary character code, hence why it's so convoluted. You need to know which code you're after.

▲

semilin 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To be fair, the alt-input is a generalized system for inputting Unicode characters outside the set keyboard layout. So it's not like they added this input specifically. Still, the em dash really should have an easier input method given how crucial a symbol it is.

	▲	kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's a generalized system for entering code page glyphs that was extended to support Unicode. 0150 and 0151 only work if you are on CP1252 as those aren't the Unicode code points.

▲

tverbeure 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks for delving into this key insight!