On MacOS it's Shift + Option + Hyphen.

On mobile it's long-press the hyphen on the keyboard.

On Windows I use https://cemrajc.github.io/em-n-en/ so that ==- is turned into it system-wide.

On recent Ubuntu versions, you can set up Compose Key, for example with Caps Lock: https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-get-em-dash-ubuntu-lin...

I've long been an em-dash user and enjoyer and hope that using it stops becoming such a signal for AI text.

It's important to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as a human who writes like AI. AI uses literary devices that humans have used for centuries, and that just because a bit of text has an em-dash, or certain tropes, doesn't mean it's LLM generated text. Yes, LLMs over-use those tropes but we can't keep calling out whats effectively just classical rhetoric as a definitive measure for detecting LLM generated text.

In a world where double quotes are incredibly overloaded in meaning, the multiple types of dashes (including hyphens and double hyphens) do seem excessive. But em dashes are widely used and are a pretty commonly prescribed style. I use em dashes in more formal writing and double hyphens in comments here just because it's incrementally easier.

I type punctuation deliberately, and have done so for over a decade. A Compose key is a wonderful thing. Curly quotes, em dashes, en dashes, minus signs, narrow no-break spaces and quite a lot more—I type them because that’s what I mean.

See also: <https://chrismorgan.info/.XCompose>, <https://chrismorgan.info/ai>.

You will find more than a few here on HN that type what they want rather than what standard keyboards make easiest.

And that's why it should be interpreted as a one way signal. I.e. lack of spaces is a great indication a human wrote it but spaces sround an em dash alone is not a particularly strong indication it was AI.

Even for Americans, there are several style guidelines/modern preferences (particularly around web content) which don't guarantee the lack of spaces around an em dash. Hence even American LLMs using spaces. Ecen my natural em dash usage always included spaces as an American.

The Chicago Manual indeed advises against spaces, but it’s written for books. AP Stylebook — that recommends spaces — is for papers. Comments are an even shorter form, so they’re closer to AP than to Chicago.

When I go to print, I use hairspace, but it’s not worth the trouble in comments.

I hate any editor changing anything without permission (especially ones that insert the closing paren/bracket).

I used to love Linux's compose keys, though, where I could just press `<win>--.` to get an en dash and `<win>---` to get an em. Most of the compose combinations were guessable, like `<win>a'` for á, `<win>co` for ©.

MacOS has a great keyboard locale switcher, but the lack of real compose keys limits things. Most characters you can press and hold and get some accented versions, but it's very slow if you're typing in French or something in the EN layout. It also has a built-in character picker, which is really nice but even more slow.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiret has a lot of options for you :)

Both my computer and my phone replace two dash symbols with an em dash, and have been doing so since well before the invention of AI.

The GP’s post history suggests they have some touch with typography.

This is HN. We’re not typical people. Quite a few of us have been consistently and deliberately using em dashes for a long, long time.

Please face it: especially on a site like HN, you will encounter em dashes from real humans, whether converted by some system software or typed deliberately.

Em dashes are a weak signal at best. On HN, they’re a very weak signal.

You didn't spell any words wrong!!! That's so obviously AI slop you're posting. What a hypocrite! At least activate a skill that randmly misspells words to mask that you're using AI to complain about other people using AI.