When I’m using Windows I miss the convenience of macOS’s shortcuts for typing some common typographic characters such as curly quotes, en- and em-dashes, and ellipsis. I’ve cobbled together a minimal script for AutoHotkey¹ to allow me to use my muscle memory from a Mac. Here is the guts of it:

; These hotkeys use the lefthand Windows key to  
; enter common opt+key special typography symbols from macOS

<#-::Send –
<#_::Send —

<#[::Send “
<#{::Send ”
<#]::Send ‘
<#}::Send ’

<#;::Send …

The remaining characters I semi-regularly use that I haven’t yet adapted are the various accents (especially the macron and umlaut), which I will need to brave the AutoHotKey documentation for to understand how to do this nicely.

1. For Windows users in the reverse situation on macOS, the input binding configuration is surprisingly flexible. It isn’t a comprehensive alternative to AutoHotKey (which supports a whole pile of weird special features and automation) but it might just be enough.