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Comment by FridayoLeary

15 hours ago

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.

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FridayoLeary

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d4rkp4ttern  15 hours ago

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”.

  • acidburnNSA  5 hours ago

    If you have the compose key enabled it's trivial to write all sorts of things. Em dash is compose (right alt for me) ---

    En dash is compose --.

    You can type other fun things like section symbol (compose So) and fractions like ⅐ with compose 17, degree symbol (compose oo) etc.

    https://itsfoss.com/compose-key-gnome-linux/

    On phones you merely long press hyphen to get the longer dash options.

  • wincy  14 hours ago

    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  15 hours ago

    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  14 hours ago

      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  14 hours ago

      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.

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