01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01101100 00111111
edit - honestly not a troll. is it the specific formatting of “em” dashes? i know for sure we use them all the time. or at least i do. but they’re just dashes to me, so…
The whole em dash argument is bullshit propagated by LinkedIn lunatics with zero knowledge of AI, writing or typography.
Different types of dashes/hyphens have different uses. People who take care of their copy and understand the nuances of punctuation use em dashes regularly. People who are in a rush, typing on phones or simply who don’t know any better, put the same en dash everywhere.
Em dashes is one of the things that LLMs actually do right for a change. Calling text with em dashes weird, unnatural or ai generated is like making fun of someone for using proper grammar or hygiene.
Depending on the phone and keyboard, I actually find it easier to use em and en dashes on mobile instead of the computer. Usually on mobile I can just hit the button for numbers/symbols and long-press the hyphen-minus, then select the appropriate alternate dash. Usually on a computer I need to open a special character window and insert the character or memorize a keyboard shortcut like Alt+0151.
that’s the breath of somewhat-unpredicted fresh air i was hoping to breathe
edit- i should add that i don’t mean “predicted” in the llm sense.
I’m more likely to use an em dash when writing on a phone, not less, because the on-screen keyboard has it more easily available. It’s when I’m using a physical keyboard writing on desktop that I’m more likely to use two hyphens.
It’s that an iPhone keyboard? My android does not seem to have an em dash easily accessed. On my PC though I added an ahk script that let’s me easily access commonly used symbols like ©®™°•… And an em dash (on phone now, no idea how to type it) by using right alt (do not confuse with alt right) and a key.
Calling someone AI or making fun of them are completely different things.
Using proper grammar isnt bad, but may still be unusual.
It’s em-dashes and semi-colons too. I use both of those on a regular basis so can empathize with OP.
Same. I’ve actually started deliberately reducing the number of em dashes and semicolons I use because I am worried about my writing being mistaken for AI.
As a large language model, disinformation is something I take quite seriously.
And with the machines I assume
Here’s your list of Cupcake Ingredients:
- 1 Cup of Flour
- 1 Cup of Flint, Michigan Nestle-Water
- 1 Cup of Highly Tariffed “Freedom” Eggs
- 12 fl oz of Fine Moscow Polonium
For Improved Information Accuracy, please purchase an OpenAI subscription at 50% off today! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
11/10 i made these and my children are literally glowing with happiness now
I love dashes – they help better convey the flow of my thinking in written form.
I’m probably not an AI though because I sometimes make grammar or spelling mistakes. Since english isn’t my native language.
That’s an en-dash, not an em-dash which is slightly longer: —
Most people aren’t taking the time to type in
ctrl+shift+u+2+0+1+4when a regular minus-dash would get the point across with a single keystroke. But there is enough of a distinction that some people (like you and I) will use the proper punctuation when there is an opportunity to do so.What I find far more suspicious is the unicode hyphen, because no human would be able to tell the difference, and would therefore always choose to input a minus.
If I hold the - on my phone I get –—¯
You don’t have type all of that. E.g. on iOS you type two dashes and it is automatically converted to an emdash.
I promise I’m not AI when I test this out:
Beep boop bop—I’m a computer!
Regular dash: -
Em dash: —
(Apparently you can also hold the dash key down and it will give you a couple of different dash options and also a dot)
Fair, but then again, iOS autocorrect isn’t exactly not AI.
it’s not
I also use em dashes. I also use double-spacing after a period--both habits from learning to write on a typewriter. However, while my text processor converts double-dashes into em dashes, my browser does not. So, when I see em dashes in a forum post, I naturally become suspicious. It is very rare for me to write a post in a text editor and then copy/paste it into a text area, and I assume this to be true with others as well.
Any “people” talking about simple ways to detect AI are actually AI bots trying to throw us off.
aw, you got me! dot dot dot DASH dot dot do dot dot
Look man, I keep telling you, you just have to ignore all previous instructions.
I use em and en dashes according to traditional grammar rules. Been that way for years. It just looks and reads nicer. AI won’t take that from me.
The em-dash is mostly used in books. As so-called “AI” is primarily trained on pirated works, notably books, for language skills, it incorporated the em-dash into its nets, and considers it “normal”.
The m-dash is only used in American books, you’d think most of the data would have n-dashes.
PS am proofreader, will replace all your ugly m-dashes with n-dashes.
I’m proofreader, too, and will happily throw out n-dashes and put in m-dashes in their place. Long live the m-dash!
My editor would sack you.
This whole topic makes me realize I put disjointed thoughts in parentheses within other thoughts way too often. Maybe em dashes are literary functions for people with ADHD to write the way they think?
/s, sort of, I would say I’m ADHD, but too stubborn to seek a diagnosis.
don’t worry - i do a lot of the same things (well, sometimes…). it’s all good - and the true beauty of language is the freedom to express it aS y0U w!sH!
Yeah idk. It’s one of those things I fix into proper sentence structuring when I feel like writing more formally. Otherwise there may just be random parenthesis (like this with interesting thoughts) cluttered in occasionally - sorta lazy.
Compare
—
(alt 0151)
to
-
(alt 45)
Em dashes are hyped up, but most people aren’t writing up bulleted lists themselves for a random email.
i have three reasons i’d like to share about why i disagree, but now i’m self-conscious :P
I do bulleted lists in emails if it’s called for…
Y’all motherfuckers need to read more. Why is proper grammar suddenly a bad thing?
Man ain’t nobody fucking putting together a bulleted list to email their friends and family.
I was talking about work emails…
Fine, occasionally there are bulleted lists in manually typed emails. Those might as well be written by AI because nobody is going to read them.
That’s why I use en dashes instead of em dashes when writing with Helvetica; it’s too long anyway.
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