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Comment by f311a | Hacker News Reader

> The use of em-dashes, which on most keyboard require a special key-combination that most people don’t know

Most people probably don't know, but I think on HN at least half of the users know how to do it.

It sucks to do this on Windows, but at least on Mac it's super easy and the shortcut makes perfect sense.

I don't have strong negative feelings about the era of LLM writing, but I resent that it has taken the em-dash from me. I have long used them as a strong disjunctive pause, stronger than a semicolon. I have gone back to semicolons after many instances of my comments or writing being dismissed as AI.

I will still sometimes use a pair of them for an abrupt appositive that stands out more than commas, as this seems to trigger people's AI radar less?

One way to use em-dash and look human is to write it incorrectly with two hyphens: --

I still use 'em. Fuck what everybody else thinks.

There's always the 3-em dash⸻a dastardly long strike.

That is fantastic.

At this point I almost look forward to some idiot calling me AI because they don't like what I said. I should start keeping score.

I can’t be the only one who has ever read https://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-and-dashes.html

This would have been very helpful three years ago, before I permanently stopped using em-dashes to not have my writing confused with LLM's.

I suspect whatever you try to do to not appear to be an LLM… LLM's also will do in time.

Might as well be yourself.

Indeed. I found that recently, Claude has been using hyphens instead of emdashes.

I've been left wondering when is the world going to find out about Input Method Editor.

It lets users type all sorts of ‡s, (*´ڡ`●)s, 2026/01/19s, by name, on Windows, Mac, Linux, through pc101, standard dvorak, your custom qmk config, anywhere without much prior knowledge. All it takes is to have a little proto-AI that can range from floppy sizes to at most few hundred MBs in size, rewriting your input somewhere between the physical keyboard and text input API.

If I wanted em–dashes, I can do just that instantly – I'm on Windows and I don't know what are the key combinations. Doesn't matter. I say "emdash" and here be an em-dash. There should be the equivalent to this thing for everybody.

Now I'm actually curious to see statistics regarding the usage of em-dashes on HN before and after AI took over. The data is public, right? I'd do it myself, but unfortunately I'm lazy.

Someone did just that!

Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071722 - Aug 2025 (266 comments)

... which I'm proud to say originated here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45046883.

Ha ha, my first use of an em-dash on HN was 2016 which was the year I started my account.

I'm safe. It must be one of you that are the LLM!

(Hey, I'm #21 on the leaderboard!).

First time I’m hearing about a shortcut for this. I always use 2 hyphens. Is that not considered an em-dash ?

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's a generalized system for entering code page glyphs that was extended to support Unicode. 0150 and 0151 only work if you are on CP1252 as those aren't the Unicode code points.

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.

Thanks for delving into this key insight!

No it's not the same. Note there are medium and long as well.

That said I always use -- myself. I don't think about pressing some keyboard combo to emphasise a point.

The long --- if you're that way minded --- is just 3 hyphens :)

Yep I realize this now, as I said in my other comment.

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