Please bring back the "em dash"

[godot-3000 3]

A boring double dash (--) should magically turn into a sexy em dash (—).

Evernote used to support the em dash, but it was left behind during a recent update. Let's bring sexy back!!! :D

[thatguyagain 0]

Yeah I use them all the time. What gives? Please bring em dashes back. 

[PinkElephant 8,111]

If you like it, don’t forget to vote …

[kstedman 1]

Yes yes yes, please!

[PinkElephant 8,111]

What is the essence of your posting ? What would improve for you if it would be implemented ? And: The vote count is not upped - forgotten to vote over yessssing ?

[kstedman 1]

Sorry about the voting thing; I'm brand new here and the only thing that looked like a vote on OP's post was the heart, so I clicked it, thinking that was what you meant. I see now that there's another place to vote, which I'll do now. 

For me, I have 2 reasons:

1. As a teacher and scholar, I use Evernote primarily as a place to take notes on what I'm reading, including typing quotes I might want to use later, and those notes very often include em-dashes. In Evernote, I have to instead type two hyphens in a row on my PC--Macs have a keyboard shortcut for dashes, but PCs don't--and then if I ever use those typed quotations in something else I'm writing, I need to manually change them to em-dashes. In Word and Google Docs, typing two hyphens magically creates an em-dash (though in slightly different ways), but it doesn't work if you paste in something you typed elsewhere. So ultimately, it makes more work for me to type quotations one way and then have to fix them later.
2. It feels old-fashioned and kind of ugly for the dash not to appear after typing two hyphens, honestly. That is, there's an aesthetic element where sentences without automatic dashes look more like something typed in Notepad or DOS, not elegant. 

I know those aren't the same reasons for everyone, just me--but I do love a good dash.

[Mike P 2,641]

10 hours ago, kstedman said:

for the dash not to appear after typing two hyphens, honestly.

Just don't accidentally type three hyphens or you get a monster dash.

Seriously though, there are a number of these little inconveniencies, so I am increasingly using Autohotkey to get EN to work in the way I want it to. Getting Autohotkey to give you a special em dash hot key or to replace two dashes with an em dash would be very simple.

[agsteele 2,949]

On a Windows keyboard Alt+0151 is an em-dash and Alt+0150 is the slightly shorter en-dash. Slightly more keystrokes than two hyphens but not seriously so. And, as @Mike Psays, very amenable to a AutoHotKey script.

[Mike P 2,641]

If you are interested in persuing Autohotkey then the script to convert two normal dashes to an em dash is as simple as 

::--::{U+2014}

I started learning AutoHotKey yesterday, and although it can seem quite complex, simple things like this are pretty straighforward. Many of the resources available to learn AHK are for V1 (now depreciated) but I found this 15 min YouTube video gave me more than enough to get started. 

 

[agsteele 2,949]

I've been using AHK for awhile. It provides me a shortcut to stamp a date & time in my preferred format. I also have it scripted to do with one key stroke what would otherwise take multiple taps.

[Mike P 2,641]

20 minutes ago, agsteele said:

I've been using AHK for awhile. It provides me a shortcut to stamp a date & time in my preferred format. I also have it scripted to do with one key stroke what would otherwise take multiple taps.

Whoops, I should have made it clear thatr I was addressing @kstedman and not you!

[kstedman 1]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. I've looked into hotkey software before, and I've tried memorizing the alt-code, and I get that both are likely the best solutions.

Yet there's still that rebellious part of me that thinks, "I shouldn't have to find workarounds for simple, common typographic symbols--in a really good product, they should be baked into the product in easy-to-use ways." Idealistic, I know!

Thanks again to all.

[Mojax005 0]

On Windows — Alt+0150 is en-dash, home Alt+0151 is em-dash.

On Mac — it's OPTION + SHIFT + - (hyphen) 

                    OR

                 Apple System Preferences -> Language and Region -> Keyboard Preferences -> Text -> uncheck "Use smart quotes and dashes"

 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Mojax005
Added Apple System Preferences -> Language and Region -> Keyboard Preferences -> Text -> uncheck "Use smart quotes and dashes"