em dash breakthrough

OK, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but the em-dash is one of my favorite punctuation marks. However, the number of keystrokes for getting one was driving me crazy—the default on windows is alt 0151—and when I’m on a roll, I don’t want to have something so trivial slow me down.

I don’t know a ton about computers, but grew up as ‘the one who fixed it when it broke’ in my family, due only to the fact that I was the only one willing to google stuff, and willing to try it out when faced with the blue screen of death. So I went back to my old ways and hit up google. It turns out making a script for it isn’t all that tough. I downloaded AutoHotKey, attempted to learn how to use it—and failed—then hopped over to the forums instead and found my answer.

Once you have the program, open a new script. Right-click anywhere and it’ll be under the ‘new’ menu. Use this code:

:?*:---::{ASC 0151} ; em dash

Inserting whatever keystrokes you want to customize for the --- . I used a double comma since it’s easy and never comes up organically. Hit save, then double click the script file icon to run it. BAM em-dashes for all!

Here's the discussion forum link for anyone interested in more about how it works.