Why is so hard to use the dash character?

Solution 1:

There are three kinds of people:

• Most people don't care.
• Some people do care, but are technically unsophisticated and use poor tools and so find a way to copy-paste the character from a web page (the wikipedia article on the character or script is a good candidate), or use a character map program (even Windows ships with one). (These are actually reasonable ways to input rarely-used characters. The dashes are not rare enough to qualify though.)

• Some people do care, and use better tools:

  • Unix systems traditionally have a Compose key. You press Compose ' e and get é. With current common default settings (X.org, utf-8), Compose - - - gives an em-dash — and Compose - - . gives an en-dash –.
  • For Windows, there are third-party programs that provide a Compose key. AllChars is one possibility; it has the em-dash and en-dash on Compose - m and Compose - n respectively by default.
  • Markup languages typically have a way of specifying characters through ASCII sequences, for example --- and -- for em-dash and en-dash in TeX, or — and – in HTML.
  • Word processors such as Microsoft Word and Open Office have an autocorrection feature that can change --- to — (I think both in fact have this one in their default settings).

Solution 2:

In Word 2003, go to the Tools menu, AutoCorrect Options... and select the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Under Replace as you type, check the check box in front of Hyphens (--) with dash(—).

I usually use LaTeX, in which case a dash is indicated in the source by three hyphens, or HTML, in which case a dash is indicated by —.

Solution 3:

Most X keyboard layouts have 1 or more easy ways to enter an en-dash and/or an em-dash without needing to remember Unicode codepoints—either by using a compose key and/or by providing a third & fourth (and sometimes even 5th & 6th) level of characters per key.

I guess there are probably some 3rd party tools for Windows to offer that functionality too...