8 ms·
Same thing as with em dashes. Some of us have been using em dashes from before ChatGPT.
by diego_sandoval 1y ago
Same thing as with em dashes. Some of us have been using em dashes from before ChatGPT.
- Fade_Dance 1y agoUnfortunately the em dash has already been relegated to the dungeon of AI suspicion for the next 5-10 years.
- sho_hn 1y agoMy workaround (well, to be honest, I've always done this: I love a good em dash, they're terrifically satisfying to use, but I'm too lazy to type them), is to use two single dashes--like so.
- adastra22 1y agoMy editor turns two single dashes into an em-dash—like this. (iOS)
- al_borland 1y agoDepending on your editor, your double dash method may auto-convert to an em dash.
- nick49488171 1y agoDo you also end ambiguously questioning messages with a double dot..
- sho_hn 1y agoNo.
- adastra22 1y agoI often edit things in Word — I have a document that I can alt-tab to and type things. It has spellcheck, etc. that my browser window does not, and I’m not at risk of losing if I refresh or something. Then copy-paste back. Word converts any - into an em dash based on context. Guess who’s always accused of being a bot? The thing is, AI learned to use these things because it is good typographical style represented in its training set.
- knowitnone2 1y agoall your Word docx are belong to Microsoft
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- johnisgood 1y agoI do the same most of the time, and LibreOffice converts "-" to an em-dash, for one, too.
- bonoboTP 1y agoIt's not a suspicion in an also otherwise properly typeset PDF, but it's a suspicion in a YouTube comment or other informal context for sure.
- the_af 1y agoI have used "--" since forever, here, on reddit, in emails, etc (I'm too lazy to type a proper em dash). Hope AI didn't ruin this for me!
- viccis 1y agoGood. It's a crutch for poorly composed sentences or for prose intending to imitate the affect of poorly composed sentences. There's not a single sentence under the sun that needs an emdash. Commas and parentheses can do it all, and an excess of either is a sign of poorly edited prose. I don't buy the pro-clanker pro-em dash movement that has come out of nowhere in the past several years.
- esseph 1y agoHm clankers, squids, and bugs?!?
- what 1y ago>pro-em dash movement that has come out of nowhere Bots that are trying to convince you they’re human..
- johnisgood 1y agoMore like humans that are using bots that are trying to convince you they are not using the bots. :D
- jibal 1y ago> prose intending to imitate the affect of poorly composed sentences Anyone who makes errors like this should not be talking.
- slipperydippery 1y agoWhat's the error? I'd hyphenate "poorly-composed" (most wouldn't these days, but they can go to hell) and I think it's a bit too wordy for what it's communicating, but I don't see what I'd call an actual error. I would personally avoid writing that "poorly composed sentences" have an "affect"—rather than the writer having or presenting an affect, or the sentences' tone being affected—as I find an implied anthropomorphizing of "sentences" in that usage, which anthropomorphizing isn't serving enough useful purpose, to my eye, that I'd want it in my writing, but I'm not sure I'd call that an error either. What did you mean? > Commas and parentheses can do it all, and an excess of either is a sign of poorly edited prose. This attitude, however, is a disease of modern English literacy.
- the_af 1y agoDammit -- I use my dashes all the time (though always double them like here). I hope AI didn't ruin this for me. (I learned to use dashes like this from Philip Dick's writings, of all places, and it stuck. Bet nobody ever thought of looking for writing style in PKD!).
- wiml 1y agoI encountered the TeXbook at a young and impressionable age, and ever since I've used em- and en-dashes a bit more often than a style guide would suggest. Not to mention diareses, though those haven't been flagged as LLM stigmata yet.
- throwaway287391 1y ago[flagged]
- adastra22 1y agoSo any iOS device (maybe macOS input too? Idk), or any software meant for word editing, like say MS Word? I think it’s the nerds who don’t use these things…
- thomascountz 1y agoYou don't want to believe people use em dashes? Why is that?
- viccis 1y agoBecause they overwhelmingly don't
- fragmede 1y agoin your software computing ecosystem and of people you've had this discussion, they don't, but the computer magically replaces - with — in various places, so obviously some people do, in some places. And then you have nerds who still put two spaces after a period, or know the difference between ... and … Do they not exist either? The only reason you think that they overwhelmingly don't is due to your biased lived experience.
- jibal 1y agoLogic fail. e.g., people overwhelmingly aren't trans, but that doesn't mean that there aren't trans people.
- thomascountz 1y agoNo one is claiming that they use em dashes overwhelmingly…
- wiml 1y agoDo you really not know any hopeless nerds? What are you doing on HN?
- Taek 1y agoGenuine question, do you actually use the formal emdash in your writing? AIs are very consistent about using the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it, whereas humans almost always tend to use a slang version - a single dash with spaces around it. That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key, and few people even know how to produce an actual emdash. That's what makes it such a good giveaway. I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong, and that you do actually use the proper double long dash in your writing, but I'm guessing that you actually use the human slang for an emdash, which is visually different and easily sets your writing apart as not AI writing!
- losvedir 1y agoIt's just Option + dash. Using option as a modifier is second nature if you ever write other than English and need, eg, é or ñ or something.
- jandy 1y agoFwiw, that’s actually an En dash not an Em dash. You need a Shift in there to get an Em dash.
- latexr 1y agoIt depends on the keyboard layout. Some (US) do have it like you described, but others have the dashes reversed. Both make sense, to a degree. On the one hand you can argue that the em-dash—being longer—should require and extra key, but on the other hand it has more uses so it should not have the extra key to be more accessible.
- jandy 1y agoAh I hadn’t considered keyboard layouts.
- pinoy420 1y ago[dead]
- guelo 1y agoI just went through your HN comment history going back to 2021 and didn't find a single —
- thomascountz 1y agoYou're making the point that OP never actually uses the em dash, by surveying their HN comments, in order to defend the notion that no one actually used em dashes prior to their proliferation by LLMs? Or do you mean something else?
- guelo 1y agoI wanted to see an em dash in the wild. In these threads there are always people claiming that they use it but in practice it is very rare.
- thomascountz 1y agoYou can find an em dash in my comment history if you're curious. Despite what could be said about poor sample selection, consider the imbalance of the argument being made: the frequency of em dash use is disproportionate to the suspicion thrust upon a sample of writing. I.e., a single em dash is suspicious, regardless of how many times it might show up. Therefore, it's more likely that someone who uses em dashes—even if only rarely—will self-select to respond to a thread like this and feel compelled to defend themselves.
- Idodbslb 1y agoHola hablame español
- viccis 1y agoHaha yep. I never saw a single person use these in internet comments pre-2023. Plenty of hyphens to simulate it - like this - but not actual em dashes. No matter how many people swear up and down that they're so important.
- tkgally 1y agoFortunately, em-dash users who have been posting to HN long enough can point to evidence of our pre-ChatGPT use: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tkgally&next=33807637#:~:text=— https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tkgally&next=3380763...
- stinkbeetle 1y agoSo you're the ones who have been training the robots.
- smt88 1y agoReddit and HN are among the highest quality sources of training text and are probably weighted very heavily as "probably human" in the mainstream models. Any source of text with huge amounts of automated and community moderation will be better quality than, say, Twitter.
- what 1y agoReddit is anything but high quality.
- jibal 1y ago"among the highEST" is comparative; it doesn't entail "high".
- mh- 1y agoOld Reddit was.
- Auracle 1y agoOh man, someone should train an LLM on pre-Digg death Reddit and modern Reddit and have them chat. It’d be a hoot.
- Jepacor 1y agoThat depends heavily on the subreddits you browse. There absolutely are places with high quality content, though it feels like they are getting sparser and sparser.
- jijijijij 1y agoFunny enough, I avoided the em dash, because everyone was using hyphens and I didn't want forensic linguistics bored. Now that AI got my FBI agents on welfare and em dashed the internet kaputt, now that I am liberated, I can't tell an em dash and hyphen apart, hand–written in my diary.
- ics 1y agoI have mixed feelings about the liberation but am glad that there are at least two of us.
- whatagreatboy 1y agoEm-dashes are very confusing to me, can never figure out if it is a emdash or a hyphen, so I avoid them altogether.
- pwdisswordfishz 1y agoA hyphen is shorter.
- whatagreatboy 1y agoIt's very difficult to determine if the length is due to the font being used or due to actually being hyphen or emdash.
- pwdisswordfishz 1y agoEn dash either, apparently.
- jijijijij 1y agoIt goes way beyond dashes, too.
- kaptainscarlet 1y agoI picked up emdash from quora, back when it used to have good writers.
- CPLX 1y agoFor both of these examples who the fuck cares. I just evaluate AI writing people send me the same as any writing. If they’re using AI to speed things up and deliver really clear and on point documents faster then great. If they can’t stand behind what they’re saying I will call them out. I get AI written stuff from team members all the time. When it’s bad and is a waste of my time I just hit reply and say don’t do this. But I’ve trained many people to use AI effectively and often with some help they can produce way better SOPs or client memos or whatever else. It’s just a tool. It’s like getting mad someone used spell check. Which by the way, people used to actually argue back in the 80’s. Oh no we killed spelling bees what a lost tradition. This conversation has been going on as long as I’ve been using tech which is about 4 decades.
- jibal 1y agoUse of spell check is a net positive but it has led to some widespread errors, like people (and widely read publications) misspelling "led" as "lead" (pet peeve). But yes, it's absurd to complain about LLMs resulting in increased literacy.
- Jepacor 1y agoI think it's easier to just stop using em dashes, as much as I like them. People have latched on to this because it works a good amount of the time, so I don't think they will stop. I don't even think they should stop, because, well, it works a good amount of the time.
- WithinReason 1y agoSo it was you who got it into the training set!
- CurtMonash 1y agoMy English professor criticized me for allegedly excessive use of em dashes in 1973. Once I started self-publishing in the 1990s, I disregarded her opinion.
- Angostura 1y agoThe article also uses M dashes
- zavertnik 1y agoSame here. Easily one of the worst parts of AI in my personal life. They don't even know about en dashes :(
- HaZeust 1y agoNo one uses em dashes with no space between the separating letters at the beginning and end of one, though - like GPT does.
- milancurcic 1y agoI and many others do. It's common in formal writing such as academic papers. It's also the most agreed upon correct use of em dash.