4 ms·
All it needed was the emdash
by mvkel 11mo ago
All it needed was the emdash
- ccppurcell 11mo agoWhy this matters: <bullet point list>.
- imiric 11mo agoYou're absolutely right!
- mjlee 11mo agoI've been pressing minus twice to type a dash on Mac OS for so long I've forgotten when I started. People are pointing it out to me more and more every day. I think my writing is distinct enough from an LLM for most people, but there's certainly a growing contingent that sees a telltale and assumes everything must be AI generated. Most (all?) keyboards I've used only have a combined hyphen‐minus key (-) which is distinct from a dash (—) and isn't quite a hyphen (‐), so I get why most people don't care. All font dependent as well to add to the fun, and my examples here render differently in the textbox and the comment!
- plufz 11mo agoYeah it actually saddens me a little, if using good and correct typography will be avoided because of LLM.
- Xss3 11mo agoEm dashes are still appropriate for articles, journals, scientific papers, and other academic or professional writing. In social media comments they came across as pompous even before LLMs and werent particularly appropriate for casual comments. Though to be fair some people enjoy coming across as pompous and embrace the 'better than the peasants and their lowly minus sign use' attitude. Makes them feel special or as if their writing is markedly better than those without fancy punctuation. (It isnt). Also yes, im describing two writers i know that are adamant about the em dash being 'a sign of an intellectual wtiter'...they are insufferable pricks.
- sgarland 11mo agoI use em dashes for the same reason that I use semicolons: it’s how I’m hearing the sentence in my head as I’m typing it. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call a part of grammar pompous. It’d be analogous with me calling your post lazy due to its various typos — I’m not, I just found the comparison apt.
- zetanor 11mo agoI would love to know what sequence of characters you normally use in place of an em-dash to express the same nuance of relationship and timing.
- aeonik 11mo agoNot the GP, but I often just use commas and parenthetical asides (like this). It's a different stylistic choice (em dashes are nice and all), but it's not how I think, and my writing reflects how I think. I also will often use the fabled semicolon. It's easy to use with contrasting statements, but that's not its only use; I can use them in some situations to elaborate where em dashes are used. I'm not saying they are a perfect replacement for em dashes (again, em dashes are cool), but it's just always been my personal style.
- boringg 11mo agoIve had to change how i write so that people don’t think its chat bot. Probably more a me thing but it has sadly ruined my heavy use of m dash and personal style. Small minority i know.
- adi_kurian 11mo agoI wouldn't bother. Who gives a flying fuck. The only people I know talking about it aren't particularly good at writing anyway.
- acheron 11mo ago“Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”
- agravier 11mo agoI've been using it as well for a long while (though using option shift -), but I don't care what people think. I won't change my style to appease Temu Sherlocks, or anyone really. How I write doesn't change the value of the message. I invite you to join me in not giving a crap.
- mjlee 11mo agoIt wasn't clear from my comment, but I absolutely don't care and I'm going to keep typing how I type.
- Macha 11mo agoI’d actually just figured out the compose binding to type it on Linux just before chatgpt got popular
- mvkel 11mo agoIf people only fixate on your emdashes, they're just lazy. The bigger AI smell to me is the "it's not X — it's Y," of which the emdash is a part.
- mr_toad 11mo agoThey’re using a crude linear model to identify AI output, which is not that much different from that which the AI safety industry is peddling, or the people that sell solutions to identify AI output. You can’t reliably predict the output of a non-linear model with a simple linear model, no matter how hard you wish it.
- mvkel 11mo agoPerfectly said. The safety industry is such a grift, propped up by ignorant VCs who don't want to miss their rocket ship
- khazhoux 11mo agoThat’s not an LLM indicator —it’s totally acceptable grammar.