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Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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.

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