I was informed that there is another way of “typing” these characters into any windows text-editor:
and as for CSIDE:
So, maybe a Mac person has key-strokes to use as well?
Are there specific rules or writting norms for the usage of dashes?
I have seen both “—”, “–” and “-” used apparently for the same purposes across all media, from comic books to videogame dialogues.
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It is all a matter of style, but these are stated in the official CoG guide (which I did not realize until the feedback) so I’m trying to adhere to that in my stories written in Choicescript.
I know that different manuals state different usage rules though, so for school or for publication with other publishers the rules might be different.
Edit: I’ve found some common things though:
the en-dash (normal keyboard dash) is used in place of “and” or “through” for most every one (1940-1945)
and
the em-dash is used for in most other applications.
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CoG’s Style Guide is specific mostly because of how narrative is formatted in-game. Basically, if you follow the guide it will always look fine, but if you don’t, sometimes it will look quite odd. For instance . . . typed as three separate dots with spaces between could end up split on two lines . .
. like so. Urgh.
It also includes some useful general tips most writers should be aware of but often aren’t (myself included).
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The hyphen “‐” or “-” (which is the standard one on a keyboard) should only ever be used for compound words (like “em-dash”). It can be used as a stand-in for true dashes, but not in formal writing.
The en-dash “–” is used for ranges (“10–20”), connections (“Bose–Einstein condensate”), doubly-compound words (e.g. “non–self-governing”), and can also be used for parenthetical statements.
The em-dash “—” is used for cut off speech (e.g. “But Jerome—”), and can also be used for parenthetical statements (I think this is a UK/US thing, with the US preferring the em-dash).
And then there are other weird ones like the figure dash “‒”, which is used for things like phone numbers, and the quotation dash “―” which is used to attribute quotations.
And of course, there’s the minus sign “−”, which is different again. The standard keyboard hyphen “-” is also used as a minus sign in programming (and can thus be referred to as a hyphen-minus), although in formal writing, the true minus sign “−” is preferred.
Easy, right? 
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I’m not sure about iPad (don’t have one), but on the Mac I use, ellipsis is ⌥; (Option + ;) while an em-dash is ⌥⇧- (Option+Shift+hypen).
Check it in Palatino or another serif.
HGs that aren’t on Steam are not copy edited (which means they may not fit the style guide because it’s whatever the author submits). Copy edited games generally do (because that’s one thing the copy editor does).
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Thank you. I’ll copy-paste this to the first post as well.
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One more clarifying edit to the original post:
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If anyone is looking at this post lately and is writing their story on a Mac - I used Opt + semi-colon to basically paste an ellipses into my code without the special formatting.
If there are any other dinosaurs out there using vim, in insert mode use control-k followed by the digraph code:
^k -M will give you an em-dash
^k ,. will be an ellipsis
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