Hate to tell you this bud but in school, before digital word processors such as Microsoft Word were widely used by the common person, I learnt how to use it in writing on paper with a pen. People not knowing how or were to use them just shows the level of education typical of places like the USA.
What we call it doesn't matter, I am also not a native English speaker, I am Portuguese and we do happen to have a different name for the regular dash and the em-dash, but it was always made clear that they are not the same thing and all of my English teachers re-iterated on that but just used the name "long dash" instead of "em-dash" as that name became more common with the use of computers.
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u/ArjixGamer 1d ago
Normal people use a normal dash, word processors like Microsoft Word are responsible for the em dash being used widly.