People have finally learned how to easily identify those who don’t write their own texts but use artificial intelligence instead. And there’s no need for heuristics or complicated rules. It’s ridiculously simple: if a text contains a proper em dash instead of some pathetic little hyphen, only AI could possibly have come up with such sophistication.
As soon as this knowledge became widespread, everyone finally figured out that the person hiding behind the nickname “Glitch the Hamster” since 1997 was actually a creation of the evil Skynet, which, sooner or later, will finally get around to killing John Connor. All because I’ve been using not only different kinds of dashes in my writing for many years, but also — heaven forbid — the letter “ё” in my Russian texts. It’s a perfectly legitimate Russian letter that even native speakers rarely bother to use, and many books don’t even print it, replacing it with a similar “е”.
Actually, I’m not the only one. And for those who appreciate proper typography, there’s a wonderful tool I’d like to tell you about today — Ilya Birman’s Typography Layout.
There’s not much to say about it, really. It’s simply a keyboard layout that you can install on either Windows or macOS, replacing the system’s standard layout with this one. By default, it’s added as an additional layout, so you can switch to it whenever you need it, but frankly, I don’t quite understand who would find that convenient.
But what’s the point of all this? Simple: this layout lets you easily type all sorts of uncommon characters that standard keyboard layouts usually don’t support:
For me, the most useful feature is the ability to type different dashes, as well as additional currency symbols (not just the almighty US dollar). I use the other characters too, just less frequently. In fact, I’d happily install this layout for the em dash alone and wouldn’t regret it for a second.
If you’re interested, here’s how to install the layout (I’m describing the Windows process, since I’ve never worked on a Mac):
- Download the installer from the author’s website: https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/ (at the time of writing, the latest version is 3.7)
- Install the English layout (and the Russian one too, if you happen to need it)
- Open your language settings (in Windows 11, that’s “Settings / Time & Language / Language & Region”), open “Language Options” for the language you need, and you’ll see the new layout under “Keyboards”
- Set the new layout as your default and simply remove the original one
And that’s it. You’re now the proud owner of a whole collection of characters you can type with ease.
