4 ms·
The em dash is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.
by energy123 2y ago
The em dash is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.
- xanderlewis 2y agoNo, thanks—I’ll keep using them as I always have.
- alt187 2y agoThe letter 'm' is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.
- sho_hn 2y agoMy advise is to take pleasure and have confidence in good writing, over misspent energy worrying about things like this. If you practice your skills, you will reap the rewards.
- jaco6 2y ago[dead]
- mmooss 2y agoSomeone else said the same. How can that be when most word processors, and at least some phone keyboards, automatically insert em dashes?
- phlakaton 2y agoEmily Dickinson wept—
- mmooss 2y agoHa, good point, and an interesting question: What kinds of dashes did Dickinson intend? It's a hard one to answer: We could look at published Emily Dickinson books from the time, but did Dickinson really pay that close attention to or have that much control over the type? We could look at Dickinson's actual personal documents, but if they were handewritten, distinguishing dashes could be difficult even if there was intention there.
- grey413 2y agoI imagine it would have been up to the typesetter to make the call. The conventions for dash usage are fairly straightforward. You use em-dashes for asides, en dashes for ranges, and hyphens for most other cases. Its easy to figure out the right character from context (apart from en ranges vs hyphen ranges).
- armedgorilla 2y agoFortunately we have troves of her handwritten documents; all of her poems were first printed posthumously. To me, she's using the punctuation as pacing or tonal markers as opposed to ligatures ("I'll clutch— and clutch— " vs "I'll clutch-and clutch-"). Many publishers style these marks as longer than normal m-dashes for that reason, which makes sense seeing as they are rarely used as asides. I interpret her marks— as breathless pauses— that— having no unicode— should be given to m— and space— https://www.edickinson.org/editions/2/image_sets/12170035 https://www.edickinson.org/editions/2/image_sets/12170035
- lostlogin 2y agoI had a quick search, attempting to find a great author who hated em dashes and preferred the vastly superior en dash. I found nothing. This list of authors punctuation quirks is interesting though. https://lithub.com/the-punctuation-marks-loved-and-hated-by-famous-writers/ https://lithub.com/the-punctuation-marks-loved-and-hated-by-...
- phlakaton 2y agoYou want Robert Bringhurst, poet and typographic nerd. He gives them special withering attention in his Elements of Typographic Style. I think he referred to them as Victorian excrescences?
- grey413 2y agoIt's infuriating that people are drawing this conclusion. LLMs pick up on em dash usage because professional and skilled writers use em dashes. They're a consistently useful, if niche, part of the literary toolkit. But, no, now it's a problem because the majority of people's experience with writing is graded essays. And because LLMs emulate professionals, it's now a red flag if students write too much like professionals. What a joke.
- nkotov 2y agoRecently ran into this. Didn't realize it was that obvious.
- windward 2y agoAnd you'd better not 'delve' into anything