Microsoft’s New Em Dash Shortcut Proves They Hate 99% of Their Users

As first spotted on TechRadar, Microsoft is finally adding a real em-dash shortcut to Windows 11 – just as AI made you want to stop using it

Image: TechRadar (screen capture)

•  Windows 11 has a new keyboard shortcut to access the ever-allusive em dash 
• To get this extra long dash you use to have to hold the the Alt key and press a number combination, as if you were keying in @ a high security bio facility, or use the emoji panel...
• Both were clunky methods, and the new shortcut is much better, although it's arguable whether you should use em dashes at all now, thanks to AI. ⸻I.e. the overuse of em dashes is a dead giveaway that AI may be actually writing your blog  articles because it had become kind an obscure symbol; until AI started spamming it all over the blogosphere. Right now, authors across the blogosphere others are scanning pages trying to remove any trace of the fact that AI did most the work lol⸻me I don't care. I need all the help I can get when it comes to editing and composition—not to mention grammar.  
• Thumb through my most recent blogs and I'm sure you'll find em dashes scattered throughout... 
•  The new keyboard shortcut for an em dash is to press the Windows key with the Shift key and the minus key all together (Windows + Shift + -). The same shortcut but without the Shift key (Windows + -) will get you an 'en' dash, which looks like this – as opposed to the em dash which is this — a fair bit longer, as you can see. 
• Note: If you're still not getting the new keyboard short-cut it could be for several different reasons.
  a. You need a laptop with a number-pad for this neat trick to work →Alt + hyphen does zilch. 
  b. You're one of the1.3B desktop users in the world. Tough luck! Microsoft's fix does zilch. 
  c. If you fit into the b. or c. category: On a Mac, press Option + Shift + hyphen (-); on Windows, if you have a numeric keypad, hold down the Alt key and type 0151!   😅      
• FunFact: typically, there should not be a space before an em dash; it is usually set closed to the words around it. However, some style guides, like those for newspapers, may recommend using spaces on either side (DuckDuckGo AI search assist).
  
            

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