Comment by alchemist1e9

2 months ago

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?

25 comments

alchemist1e9

Reply
fao_  2 months ago

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.

  • crabmusket  2 months ago

    [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.)

    • fao_  2 months ago

      As per the wiki article someone else listed — the compose key was available on keyboards back in the 1980s (notably it was invented only 5 years after the Space Cadet keyboard was invented!).

      Some DOS applications did have support for it. The reason it wasn't included is baffling, and it's especially baffling to me that other operating systems never adopted it, simply because

          compose a '

      is VASTLY more user friendly to type than:

          alt-+
    1F600

      which I have met some windows users who memorize that combo for things like the copyright symbol (which is simply:)

          compose o c

Freak_NL  2 months ago

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).

  • chrismorgan  2 months ago

    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.

    • stn8188  2 months ago

      In electrical engineering I'm still using a few alt codes daily, like 248 (degree sign), 234 (Omega), 230 (mu), and 241 (plus or minus). I'd love to add 0151 to the repertoire, but I don't want people to think I used AI to write stuff....

    • 1718627440  2 months ago

      I've never bothered to read about the compose key, but en/em-dash is accessible (in Debian) with AltGr-(Shift)-Hyphen/Minus too. Copyright (©) is AltGr-Shift-C.

    • dolmen  2 months ago

      I miss the numeric keypad (gone on laptops) to be able to properly type my last name with its accentuated letter.

0x457  2 months ago

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.

throwup238  2 months ago

Or, you know — iOS. That’s huge marketshare for a keyboard that automatically converts -- to —

  • redwall_hp  2 months ago

    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.

    • mock-possum  2 months ago

      And whether the user cares to ‘write properly’ to boot. I love using dashes to break up sentences - but I rarely take the time to use the proper dashes, unless I’m writing professionally. I treat capitalization the same way - I rarely capitalize the first letter of a paragraph. I treat ‘rules’ like that as typographic aesthetic design conventions - optional depending on context.

  • alchemist1e9  2 months ago

    That probably explains everything from a statistical perspective about this em dash topic. I didn’t know that — Thanks.