> *They also break a sentence into parts.* IMHO, this is the main determination ... | Hacker News

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		throw0101c on March 12, 2023 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Punctuation Matters: How to use the en dash, em da... > They also break a sentence into parts. IMHO, this is the main determination on when I decide to use em-dashes: is the text between them an aside of some kind? An alternatives would be to use parentheses. Personally I do not find that " - " as the GP suggests enough of a visual cue as "—". And on macOS using different dashes is fairly straight-forward: * hyphen: the key next to zero, "-" * en-dash: alt/option-"-": – * em-dash: shift-alt/option-"-": — Some apps (e.g. Mail) auto-convert double-"-" into an em-dash as well.

gnull on March 12, 2023 [–]

Good to see OSX people thought about this.

On Linux, one needs to enable Compose key (keyboard layout settings). After that, you get default sequences like --. and --- for en- and em-dashes.

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