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Somewhat related, the leaderboard of em-dash users on HN before ChatGPT: https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderboard-v2.html https://www.ga

• maplethorpe 11mo ago
  They should include users who used a double hyphen, too -- not everyone has easy access to em dashes.
  • venturecruelty 11mo ago
    Oof, I feel like you'll accidentally capture a lot of getopt_long() fans. ;)
    • Kinrany 11mo ago
      Excluding those with asymmetrical whitespace around might be enough
  • gblargg 11mo ago
    Does AI use double hyphens? I thought the point was to find who wasn't AI that used proper em dashes.
    • jader201 11mo ago
      Anytime I do this — and I did it long before AI did — they are always em dashes, because iOS/macOS translates double dashes to em dashes. I think there may be a way to disable this, but I don’t care enough to bother. If people want to think my posts are AI generated, oh well.
      • teiferer 11mo ago
        There is also the difference in using space around em-dashes.
      • JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
        > Anytime I do this — and I did it long before AI did — they are always em dashes It depends if you put the space before and after the dashes--that, to be clear, are meant to be there--or if you don't.
        • oniony 11mo ago
          I cannot remember ever reading a book where there was a space around the dashes.
          • kuschku 11mo ago
            That depends on the language — whereas German puts spaces around —, English afaik usually doesn’t. Similarly, French puts spaces before and after ? ! while English and German only put spaces afterwards. [EDIT: I originally wrote that French treats . , ! ? specially. In reality, french only treats ? and ! specially.]
            • iLoveOncall 11mo ago
              French doesn't put one before the period.
            • bratwurst3000 11mo ago
              french does "," and "." like the british and germans the rest is space befor space after
            • greenicon 11mo ago
              In German you use en-dashes with spaces, whereas in English it’s em-dashes without spaces. Some people dislike em-dashes in English though and use en-dashes with spaces as well.
              • JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
                > whereas in English it’s em-dashes without spaces Didn't know! Woot, I win! Why does AI have a preference for doing it differently?
  • bigiain 11mo ago
    That would false positive me. I have used double dashes to delimit quote attribution for decades. Like this: "You can't believe everything you read on the internet." -- Abraham Lincoln, personal correspondence, 1863
    • dragonwriter 11mo ago
      That's literally a standard use of em-dash being approximated by a double hyphen, though.
  • SoftTalker 11mo ago
    Double-hyphen is an en-dash. Triple-hyphen is an em-dash.
    • dragonwriter 11mo ago
      Double hyphen is replaced in some software with an en-dash (and in those, a triple hyphen is often replaced with an em-dash), and in some with an em-dash; its usually used (other than as input to one of those pieces of software) in places where an em-dash would be appropriate, but in contexts where both an em-dash set closed and an en-dash set open might be used, it is often set open. So, it’s not unambiguously s substitute for either is essentially its own punctuation mark used in ASCII-only environments with some influence from both the use of em-dashed and that of en-dashes in more formal environments.
• a5c11 11mo ago
  Apparently, it's not only em-dash that's distinctive. I've went through comments of the leader, and spot he also uses the backtick "’" instead of the apostrophe.
  • kuschku 11mo ago
    I (~100 in the leaderboard, regardless of how you sort) also frequently use ’ (unicode apostrophe) instead of ' :D
  • baiwl 11mo ago
    Just to be clear this is done automatically by macOS or iOS browsers when configured properly.
    • a5c11 11mo ago
      Never happened to me. And I'm using Mac and iPhone.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• lxgr 11mo ago
  Amazing! But no love for en dashes?
• Ajakks 11mo ago
  I have used a dash - like that for almost 20 years, 100% of the time I ought to use a semi-colon and about half of the time for commas - it let's me just keep talking about things, the comma is harder pause. I've recently started seriously writing at a literary level, and I have fallen in love with the em dash - it has a fantastic function within established professional writing, where it is used often - its why the AI uses it so much.