News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Programmer Identity Crisis by johnisgood on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @01:28PM (#45658674)
Pressing "-" and a space gets replaced by an emdash to me in LibreOffice. No extra keystrokes required.
Re:The Programmer Identity Crisis by benji-york on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @01:53PM (#45659117)
I don't think the character is that uncommon in the output of slightly-sophisticated writers and is not hard to generate (e.g., on macOS pressing option-shift-minus generates an em-dash).
Re:The Programmer Identity Crisis by Kerrick on Tuesday October 21, 2025 @02:41PM (#45659847)
In fact, on macOS and iOS simply typing two dashes (--) gets autocorrected to an em dash. I used it heavily, which was a bit sloppy since it doesn't also insert the customary hair spaces around the em dash.

Incidentally, I turned this autocorrection off when people started associating em dashes with AI writing. I now leave them manual double dashes--even less correct than before, but at least people are more likely to read my writing.

Re:The Programmer Identity Crisis by Izkata on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @10:27PM (#45677514)
That's an en dash, not an em dash. An em dash is longer and as far as I know Libreoffice doesn't have a built-in way to make one (though you may have added it to the autocorrect settings yourself).

en dash: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2013

em dash: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2014

Edit: Ah, Libreoffice does have a built-in autocorrect for em dash, but you have to type this:

  :---:
Re:The Programmer Identity Crisis by johnisgood on Thursday October 23, 2025 @05:15PM (#45687287)
Thanks! I did confuse the two despite knowing of both.

So ":---:" does work for the em dash? I thought something with fewer keystrokes work, too, at least I remember the em dash from less, but perhaps I just typed it so quickly I did not realize it was indeed ":---:".