It's still safe to just use two dashes instead--maybe like two spaces after a period for some, but another distinguishing feature.
Yes, that is also an option. What's interesting is that Notion automatically converts two dashes into an em dash, so wouldn't work if you Notion for your drafts or reports.
Oh, didn't know that. Here's a link to disable it, if applicable:
Oh so it's a macOS specific setting! The smart quotes setting also bugs me to no end, breaks my markdown documents often when importing them from Notion.
Since I primarily work with Notion for content creation, I never realized macOS does it by default.