Oh, maybe that's why people who didn't already know or care about emdashes are very alert to their presence.
If you have to do something very exotic with keypresses or copypaste from a tool or build your own macro to get something like an emdash, or , it's going to stand out, even if it's an integral part of standard operating systems.
Exotic? At least in every microsoft product i.e. word, outlook, etc. that I’ve had to use for school and business for the last couple decades does it automatically just by typing “—-“.
Right, just saying things like that -- aren't immediately apparent unless they're pointed out to you. The extended palette of alt+123 keycodes, unicode characters, stuff like that requires "exotic" macros or keypresses to type out. Despite decades of extensive experience with writing, writing software, programming, etc, I never crossed paths with em-dashes. They were a niche thing prior to AI making them a thing. I basically thought they were a font or style choice prior to ChatGPT. Most people wouldn't have a clue unless they went through classes that specifically trained on the use of emdashes.
I like them as an AI shibboleth, though -- the antennae go up, and I pay more attention to what I'm reading when I see it, so it raises the bar for the humans that ostensibly ought to be better at writing than the rest of us.
Edit: Interesting. I tried using -- and it doesn't work for me. I'd have to go change settings somewhere, or switch the browser I'm using to elicit an em-dash. I don't think I've ever actually written one, at least intentionally, and it wasn't until today that I was even aware of hyphen-hyphen.
Edit again: I had to go into system settings and assign a compose key — after that, I can now do em-dashes. Having degrees° will be nice, too, I guess.
They weren't exotic, they just weren't part of your writing style
The reason "--" autocorrects to an em dash in practically any word processing software (not talking about browsers) is that that's the accepted way to type it on a typewriter. And you don't need to go into any system settings to enable it. It came in around when things like Smart Quotes came in.
My German keyboard has umlaut keys: üäö. I use them daily. I was told that in other parts of the World, people don't have umlaut keys, and have to use combos like ⌥U + a/o/u.
Boy, I sure hope they don't think me an AI.
Just because many people have no idea how to use type certain characters on their devices shouldn't mean we all have to go along with their superstitions.
Mac, alt-minus. Did by accident once, causing confusion because Xcode uses monospace font where -, – and — look identical, and an m-dash where a minus should be gets a compiler error.
But I also have windows keyboards plugged in. Hard enough getting the ones I like around here without also constraining them to Apple's preferred symbols printed on the keys.
hyphen + space in microsoft word will often (depends on your settings) produce an em dash. It’s not some crazy hidden feature.
These days word is less popular though, with google docs, pages, and other editors taking pieces of the pie. Maybe that’s where the skepticism comes from.
My computer converts -- into an emdash automatically. Been using it since 2011. Sorry you've been missing out on a part of the English language all this time.
There isn't one?
Oh, maybe that's why people who didn't already know or care about emdashes are very alert to their presence.
If you have to do something very exotic with keypresses or copypaste from a tool or build your own macro to get something like an emdash, or , it's going to stand out, even if it's an integral part of standard operating systems.