Comment by Wowfunhappy
2 months ago
Ahem.
https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...
As #9 on the leaderboard I feel like I need to defend myself.
2 months ago
Ahem.
https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...
As #9 on the leaderboard I feel like I need to defend myself.
I’m guessing this list is defined by Mac users who all got taught em dash somewhere similar or for similar reasons. It is only easy to use on a Mac. But I wonder what is the 2nd common influence of users using it?
On Linux I just type (in sequence):
compose - -
and it makes an em dash, it takes a quarter of a second longer to produce this.
I don't know why the compose key isn't used more often.
[As an English typer] Where is this compose key on my keyboard?
(This is a vaguely Socratic answer to the question of why the compose key is not more often used.)
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The compose key feels mandatory for anyone who wants to type their native langauge on an US-english layout. The combination[0] is "Compose--." though: –
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key#Common_compose_com...
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This is a misconception which keeps getting repeated. It's easy to use an em-dash on any modern Linux desktop as well (and in a lot of other places).
Though it does still require nominating a key to map to Compose. And is not generally meaningfully documented. So I’d only call it easy for the sorts of people that care enough to find it.
But then, long before I had a Compose key, in my benighted days of using Windows, I figured out such codes as Alt+0151. 0150, 0151, 0153, 0169, 0176… a surprising number of them I still remember after not having typed them in a dozen years.
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Android — keyboard – good for endash to !
My favourite android keyboard has a compose key and also a lot of good defaults in long touch on keys (including en and em under dash). Only downside is last android update causes the keyboard to be overlapped in landscape mode. A problem with a number of alternative keyboards out there. https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard/issues/957
It's just em dash is the correct symbol, and typing it on Mac is simple: `cmd + -`
You can tell if I'm using mac or not for specific comment by the presence of em dash.
Or, you know — iOS. That’s huge marketshare for a keyboard that automatically converts -- to —
Or Microsoft word. Many common tools in different contexts make it easy to do.
As it turns out, the differentiator is the level of literacy.
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That probably explains everything from a statistical perspective about this em dash topic. I didn’t know that — Thanks.
You can also hold down the hyphen key and select it from the popup menu. En dash lives there, too.
In emacs, Ctr-x 8 <return> is how i type it. Pretty easy.
I’m disappointed that I’m on it — I’ll have to try harder.
You'd need a time machine, it only tracks prior to the release of ChatGPT.