Hacker News Reader

Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

In principle, an em dash is supposed to be used where most people use hyphens. That's why Word/LaTeX make it easy to use:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...

View on HN

Yeah, for sure, but without easy way to access it from the keyboard, most don't bother wasting time inserting it.

Smart tools like LibreOffice and above indeed help with it, but in other scenarios, especially common browser usage that's not the case. Compose key is really useful for that, but it's not widely known outside of Linux.

MacOS makes it simple: option + - for en-dash, option + shift + - for em-dash.

I see. What other combos does it support?

Option is used extensively for non-Ascii characters, a comprehensive list would be quite long.

A few of the easier to remember:

option + 0 for degrees º

option + u for to place an umlaut over the next typed character (when it's a valid combination, anyway) ëüä

option + c for cedilla ç

Interesting. Kind of reinventing Compose key combos. I wonder why they didn't just reuse Compose ones from FreeBSD.

This dates back to the beginning of the Mac, so it's almost 10 years older than FreeBSD. (I'm unfamiliar with other UNIX compose key tooling that may have predated it.)

There are lots: https://mackeeper.com/blog/special-characters-mac-keyboard/#...

Yeah, looks like they developed separately from Compose combos.

I use µ for microns or micrometers µm. Option + m.

Also if you need ad-hoc bullets, just reach for option + 8.

• Like this.

The difficulty in accessing symbols like these is one of my (I'm sure correctable) hang-ups when using Linux — Arch, btw.

I would not call keyboard shortcuts "simple". Having a key on the keyboard is simple, having to memorize shortcuts is not.

Simple in that many of them are relatively easy to remember after learning. ¢ for example is option+4—where the dollar sign is.

A keyboard with every possible character would have its own simplicity challenges.

On macOS and Windows there are keyboard shortcuts for en/em dashes, but I also prefer the Compose key.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com