The compose key, for those who use it, also makes it very easy to do em/en dashes, and I use them quite regularly as a result.

Came to say this as well. I use the compose key to write em dashes and other symbols on a daily basis. Very handy!

`misc:typo` is easier

That has nothing to do with being on a Mac. Em-dashes and the compose-key work fine on Linux, and Android has them under the '-' of the on-screen keyboard when long-pressed.

(Windows probably has some way, but those are rarely discoverable.)

I disagree, there is absolutely no easy way to do it on Windows. You can install a third party program that emulates the compose key but on macos it "just works". And I think that makes a difference for 95% of users

Install PowerToys, hold dash and then press space. This works for all the variants for any keyboard character.

Hit Windows+. click on the "Symbols" tab and they're right there under general punctuation.

Released back in 2019 for Windows 10.

I've always (well...for 20 years) done a Google search for "em-dash" then copy/paste the character off whatever result page come up. Word and other fancy editors always provided a popup pane where these characters could be clicked to insert.

It's a bit funny. On macOS en and em dashes can be natively typed with alt+- and alt+shift+-. The responses to your comment are apparently suggesting these methods are just as easy as that:

1. Install and configure this extra tool, which also by default enables a ton of other things you may not want, and may as well be a third-party tool even though it's technically built by Microsoft

2. Do a Google search and copy-paste (!)

3. Use a keyboard shortcut to bring up a symbol picker, then click on the tab containing the en and em dashes, then click to type them in

I mean, come on.

yeah, this is exactly my point haha. these are not at all the same

That's true, I do use them a lot on iOS as well—similarly, it's a long-press on '-' to get an en or em dash.

EURKEY layout in particular has them easily accessible.

On iPhone, type two hyphens to make an em dash:

-- into —

If OP wrote their post on an iPhone, they would have inadvertently appeared as an LLM by their own test.

You can also hold the hyphen key to select an en dash.

Does that become an en dash if it's between two numbers?

It does indeed! One of my favourite iOS keyboard features.

I hate that this feature doesn't have a timeout, so when you want to type "--" you have to "- -" and then go back and delete the space. You can't just wait as with double-space vs space-wait-space. It can be turned off, but that turns off other locale-based punctuation like quotes.

Windows does too now via Windows+. which opens the "emoji keyboard" but you can switch to the "symbols" tab to see unicode. It does have multiple dashes in the quick access bar at the top or you can search.

I've used WinCompose¹² to add key composition to Windows for many years (after discovering the concept in Unix-land), which I still find more convenient than the other options I've tried (including the Windows Emoji keyboard).

----

[1] https://wincompose.info/

[2] Though having checked just now, the sequences for en-dash and em-dash don't seem to be working. Perhaps one of my custom macros is interfering somehow… (it is behaving overall, ellipsis just worked as did the following diacritic and other symbols: áèîöūñ±⁰¹²∞¡¿‽π⬚). I'll have to poke at it later and see what is ary.