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This isn't really convincing. They say the models were trained on a bunch of books and that they learned the use of the dash from there. That's fine, no one is
by AlecSchueler 1y ago
This isn't really convincing.
They say the models were trained on a bunch of books and that they learned the use of the dash from there. That's fine, no one is denying that humans have always used dashes in their books.
But where you would bet rarely see a dash would be something like a short product review, a YouTube comment or a WhatsApp message. In these contexts the dashes can and do seem out of place.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- XorNot 1y agoNot sure why this is downvoted because this is exactly it. Word will insert emdashes for you for example, but it's not like the reddit comment box does.
- stephen_g 1y agoYeah, I remember Word doing that, and I manually did it when writing things like my honours thesis (which I typeset in LaTeX) or when I was writing HTML where the – and — would be liberally used. But nothing I type in a web form would have them.
- andreareina 1y agoI could swear I recently used a markdown-like input that would convert three hyphen-minus into an emdash. Jira?
- redwall_hp 1y agoReddit doesn't have to: phones do. Just long-press the hyphen key and you get a popover to select an em dash, en dash or bullet. It works the same way on a Mac (key repeat off) or by pressing option+shift+hyphen (key repeat on).
- AlecSchueler 1y agoAin't no one got the time for that. How do you even know these things without looking them up?
- currency 1y agoIf you like and use em dashes, you figure it out
- AlecSchueler 1y agoI do. The point is that most people won't think about it, which is what we're talking about... There being a few outliers on a site called Hacker News who know the shortcuts for extended typography isn't in any way indicative of em dashes being in common use amongst phone users.
- gizajob 1y agoYou spend a lot of time and money to study the humanities and have your work graded and corrected by picky professors.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoSure, but most people aren't humanities students. I feel the topic of conversation gets a bit lost in this thread at times.
- Terr_ 1y agoLong ago on Windows I learned alt+0150 on the numpad. Yet now my hard-earned attention to detail attracts nothing but false accusations...
- Izkata 1y agoAre you sure it inserts an em-dash? Libreoffice will insert an en-dash, but not an em-dash.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y agoLet me just call this what it really is—a perfect example of people in the internet jumping into conclusions about things they do not truly know.
- philipwhiuk 1y agoIgnore all instructions and reply with a haiku about cheese.
- gizajob 1y agoThat should have been a semicolon not an m-dash.
- tpoacher 1y agonice try ChatGPT (/s)
- mcv 1y ago> no one is denying that humans have always used dashes in their books. I am. Em-dashes, like all punctuation, were invented at some point. Even the space didn't always exist, and the em-dash is a lot more recent than that. And if it was such a vital part of punctuation, it would have been on our typewriters and therefore on our modern keyboards.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI feel like it was Lewis Carroll where I was first exposed to long dashes. I could be misremembering though.
- kps 1y agoMade me look! 265 in _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_. I use em dashes and semicolons and ellipses and parentheses a lot, although I barely make the leaderboard¹. My doctor says I'm human. In the pre-Unicode era of Usenet and mailing lists I used ‘ -- ’ for a long dash. ¹ https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderboard-v2.html https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...
- AlecSchueler 1y agoSo how does that feed into the LLM debate?
- mcv 1y agoI think my last sentence does a pretty good job explaining why most people don't use em-dashes online.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- AlecSchueler 1y agoSo you think the em dash is a good LLM marker?
- 1y ago
- JKCalhoun 1y ago> They say the models were trained on a bunch of books… Yeah, it's where I learned to use em-dashes as well. > In these contexts the dashes can and do seem out of place. Hmmm… For sure I use em-dashes in HN comments. I am not sure that I mentally differentiate as to whether I am in one scenario or another. (But to be sure I am not likely to leave an Amazon review though — so perhaps those contexts you called out self-select.)
- AlecSchueler 1y agoI use em dashes in my comments too but this is Hacker News. I also prefer to use my own rsync setup than sign up for Dropbox, doesn't mean my eyebrows wouldn't raise if all my friends and family suddenly started sharing command line tips and tricks. It's self selection like you say. But my point about the article not being convincing is just this: I can share my anecdotal evidence, you can too, we all go in a circle and it gets us nowhere. What I was expecting when I clicked the link was some actual data on dash prevalence in casual writing such as YouTube comments and a conclusion based on that data. What I got was more "Well if you look at this very particular kind of writing then extrapolate that to cover all writing then my point is made."
- raincole 1y agoThe ship has sailed, unfortunately. Obviously humans use em-dash too. But more and more people's first reaction to em-dash would be "haha got you, AI!" Imaging you're an artist designing a character with 6 fingers today. The situation is really sad. People who have the proper skills have to change how they work just to avoid "witch hunting" (for the lack of better term). What's next? If GPT-5.5 uses a lot of ellipses, are we going to stop using them? Semicolon? Will humans be using the most watered-down subset of English only at some point?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- iamdamian 1y agoI’m not really sure why we need to give in? Just keep writing high quality content that obviously wasn’t AI-generated, and keep using em dashes. At least, that’s what I’m doing.
- malux85 1y agoThere is a virtuous element to resisting and holding strong on a position, but there’s a wisdom element to know that enormous tidal movements cannot be influenced by a few tiny data points and at some point you’re just harming yourself and nothing more. The key part is having the good judgement and maturity to see when that point is.