6 ms·

It's a terrible side effect of AI that regular people using em dashes in honest writing are labelled as AI. I have a deep love for em and en dashes--you can se

It's a terrible side effect of AI that regular people using em dashes in honest writing are labelled as AI. I have a deep love for em and en dashes--you can see heavy usage in my writing that's 10 years older than chatgpt. My love for the dashes hasn't gone, but now I use a double dash instead so I am not immediately labelled as an AI.

keybored 11mo ago
It’s just less literate people feeling the need to out themselves.
- hekkle 11mo ago
  It has nothing to do with literacy, the em-dash simply is not on the standard US QWERTY keyboard. This means that people who purposefully use it, either have to copy-paste it from somewhere or (if they-re on Windows), use "Alt + 0 1 5 1". This is very obviously not a natural behaviour that 'literate' people use when they write.
  - askonomm 11mo ago
    Many (most?) WYSIWYG editors automatically convert two hyphens (--) to em dash, no need to specifically look out for it.
    - Suppafly 11mo ago
      People aren't likely to pre-type their HN and reddit comments in a word processor though, so when you see them on such sites, it's a good indication that the comment came from an LLM and not a genuine person.
      - swiftcoder 11mo ago
        Maybe they are using a Mac (where you type alt-hyphen for a emdash)? Or run Windows and have a numeric keypad (ctrl-minus)? Or they run a browser extension like Grammarly that auto-substitutes?
      - keybored 11mo ago
        I’ve typed comments here on this site in Emacs using a Firefox extension. And often I do it manually since I don’t want to lose three paragraphs to the whims of the browser state. Not that it matters since I type such characters with my keybored directly. There are dozens of us.
  - sfRattan 11mo ago
    If you're writing in MS Word, LibreOffice, or most word processors, typing a word and then two dashes and then a word, without any spaces, like--this will generate an em dash automatically. I learned how to do it in Freshman English in high school. Though I was also taught to double space after a period. To revise GP's comment: it’s just less computer literate people feeling the need to out themselves.
  - wlesieutre 11mo ago
    You can type "--" in most writing software and it will turn into an em-dash. On a Mac, this includes TextEdit by default, or literally every text input field if you enable the "smart dashes" setting. I can type — right now in my web browser with two presses on my ordinary laptop keyboard and no memorizing character ID numbers, not exactly rocket science. If you're using Word or other fancy word processors, you don't even have to type two hyphens. One will do, and it looks at the grammar and changes to the correct type of dash for you automatically. Have all the people parroting "dash means it was written by ChatGPT" never used a word processor?
    - hekkle 11mo ago
      > Have all the people parroting "dash means it was written by ChatGPT" never used a word processor? Probably not, this is "HACKER" News, if I type two n-dashes on a website, I EXPECT two n-dashes, otherwise things like HTML comments would break the page. 
      - layer8 11mo ago
        As a hacker, you should have heard of the Compose key, or maybe of Ctrl+K in Vim.
        hekkle 11mo ago
        The compose key and Ctrl+K in Vim both assume the use of Linux, or janky 3rd party software. Compose is the same argument I have already covered with Windows, you need to enter a cryptic key-combination into the keyboard, which is not intuitive. As for the Vim argument, I'm struggling to work out how to use Vim to type on here? Perhaps you could shed some light? I suppose you could yank-put it, but I fail to see how that is less effort than copy-paste, the other argument I already covered.
      - keybored 11mo ago
        Why would you write to n-dashes? HTML comments use hyphens.
  - thwarted 11mo ago
    The compose key on Linux makes deliberate use much easier (rather than automatic replacement which often triggers when I don't want it). There's a compose key utility for Windows, but has some minor annoyances like many input (mouse or keyboard) macro extender applications.
  - 3eb7988a1663 11mo ago
    Pandoc has had "smart" typography[0] which generates em-dash and en-dash for a long time. I found a forum post for 2011 where people were discussing em dashes and such. That thread indicates that John Gruber created a Markdown extension in 2004 which was already handling en and em dashes[2]. [0] https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/7.1-typography.html https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/7.1-typography.html [1] https://pandoc-discuss.narkive.com/PHmQaAgM/en-dashes-vs-em-dashes-revisited https://pandoc-discuss.narkive.com/PHmQaAgM/en-dashes-vs-em-... [2] https://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/
  - jph00 11mo ago
    On Mac you type opt-shift-hyphen — like this — and on Win/Linux you use a compose key. A lot of people who care about typography/grammar have spent a moment to learn to do this. Once learned, you can use it for the rest of your life.
  - keybored 11mo ago
    You have to take a step back. The first part is not about writing prose. It is about consuming it. And all publishers who are mainstream and respectable use proper English symbols. Now they might use ASCII apostrophe instead of the recommended left single quotation mark. But using a single hyphen or two hyphens or three hyphens for an em-dash is out of the question. Literacy starts with consuming texts and doesn’t stop once you have learned to read comfortably. People who consume a more varied selection of prose than, say, programming mailing lists will have seen plenty of em-dashes in their time and won’t balk at people using normal punctuation.
- ants_everywhere 11mo ago
  It's not just less literate, it's also people who feel the need to be amateur prosecutors. It's the same thing as judging people who wear their hair too long, or wear pajamas on the plane, or who wear pants that are too baggy, or who have children out of wedlock, etc. Some people are deeply convinced that society is on the decline and that they have a mission to ensure everyone else stays in line. It's been that way throughout history.
JKCalhoun 11mo ago
Ha ha, now labeled as old — when on a typewriter it was common to use two dashes as a fake em dash.
- BearOso 11mo ago
  I don't know when the phrase "em dash" got popular. It was probably due to web development, because, unless you were into typesetting, nobody knew what "em" was. We always just called them dashes--two hyphens make a dash.
  - namanyayg 11mo ago
    Typographical fun fact: An em-dash is approximately the width of the letter "M", and an en-dash is the width of a lowercase n! The latter is barely used, but is the right way to indicate dates like 2023-25. The more you know!
  - JKCalhoun 11mo ago
    I would go back to the advent of Desktop Publishing. The early Macintosh + Laserwriter really did a number in bringing esoteric terms like "font" to us commoners. Some of us found out we were typography nerds and didn't know it until then.
Buttons840 11mo ago
It's not that hard. Period (.) ends the sentence, comma (,) breaks up the sentence. If the next sentence is closely related, end the sentence with a semi-colon (;). For every other type of break--especially those that resemble the natural and chaotic shifts of thought we all have--use an em-dash. (Oh, and put text you want to be optionally skipped in parenthesis.) Em-dash is probably the most natural punctuation; it best matches the kinds of shifts our brain does when thinking.
- Cogito 11mo ago
  It may be due to AI proliferation, or the culturural bias I have, but I increasingly find em-dashes jarring. As you point out, authors use them for the "natural and chaotic shifts of thought we all have" and when there are lots of these shifts it feels like I have to keep track of multiple conversations at once. For example, in the article we have: If your goal is to have other people read—and hopefully enjoy—your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. When I read this I instinctively pause the 'main' thought/voice, read the aside, then re-establish my train of thought. In my opinion the sentence reads just as well without the aside: If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. [edit - putting comma back in to break up the long sentence] If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. I think this is the only aside formatted like this in the article. The other em-dashes take the place of pauses in sentences, places I would normally use a comma or semicolon, or are used to introduce a list where I would typically use a colon. Again this is probably a cultural thing, maybe a reaction to AI as well, but I find the em-dash a lot more though-interrupting than the other punctuation choices and I wonder if it's something I'll get used to or not.
  - Buttons840 11mo ago
    I would have used parenthesis for that example, since it departs and returns to the main line of thought so cleanly.
  - jph00 11mo ago
    IMO the em-dash version is way easier to read in this example, FWIW.
gerdesj 11mo ago
When you feel the need to dive in with a dash (m, n or otherwise), why not stop ... think for a while: consider going in with a colon instead?
- thwarted 11mo ago
  Emdashes are useful for an embedded appositive phrase, which a colon can't handle the same way.
  - gerdesj 11mo ago
    Quite - horses for courses. However: you should pick your weapon with some care.
- keybored 11mo ago
  You say why not. I say why.
PunchyHamster 11mo ago
Yeah, just writing in Word (and few other) will get your - turned into em dashes. Personally I hate them. Mostly coz of random editors making GNU cmdline options into emdash and so breaking copying but I also think they are ugly, way too long in most fonts
maguay 11mo ago
Agreed. I've used the em dash for well over a decade and love it, but am having to train myself to not use it simply to not appear as though my text is written by AI. At least avoiding the "it's not just that X, it's Y" style that AI loves is easy enough!
zdc1 11mo ago
It's okay. Give it a few years and every writing style will be being used by AI. We'll then be able to use whatever style we like as no one will be able to tell our writing from AI anyway.

keybored 11mo ago

It’s just less literate people feeling the need to out themselves.

hekkle 11mo ago
It has nothing to do with literacy, the em-dash simply is not on the standard US QWERTY keyboard. This means that people who purposefully use it, either have to copy-paste it from somewhere or (if they-re on Windows), use "Alt + 0 1 5 1". This is very obviously not a natural behaviour that 'literate' people use when they write.
- askonomm 11mo ago
  Many (most?) WYSIWYG editors automatically convert two hyphens (--) to em dash, no need to specifically look out for it.
  - Suppafly 11mo ago
    People aren't likely to pre-type their HN and reddit comments in a word processor though, so when you see them on such sites, it's a good indication that the comment came from an LLM and not a genuine person.
    - swiftcoder 11mo ago
      Maybe they are using a Mac (where you type alt-hyphen for a emdash)? Or run Windows and have a numeric keypad (ctrl-minus)? Or they run a browser extension like Grammarly that auto-substitutes?
    - keybored 11mo ago
      I’ve typed comments here on this site in Emacs using a Firefox extension. And often I do it manually since I don’t want to lose three paragraphs to the whims of the browser state. Not that it matters since I type such characters with my keybored directly. There are dozens of us.
- sfRattan 11mo ago
  If you're writing in MS Word, LibreOffice, or most word processors, typing a word and then two dashes and then a word, without any spaces, like--this will generate an em dash automatically. I learned how to do it in Freshman English in high school. Though I was also taught to double space after a period. To revise GP's comment: it’s just less computer literate people feeling the need to out themselves.
- wlesieutre 11mo ago
  You can type "--" in most writing software and it will turn into an em-dash. On a Mac, this includes TextEdit by default, or literally every text input field if you enable the "smart dashes" setting. I can type — right now in my web browser with two presses on my ordinary laptop keyboard and no memorizing character ID numbers, not exactly rocket science. If you're using Word or other fancy word processors, you don't even have to type two hyphens. One will do, and it looks at the grammar and changes to the correct type of dash for you automatically. Have all the people parroting "dash means it was written by ChatGPT" never used a word processor?
  - hekkle 11mo ago
    > Have all the people parroting "dash means it was written by ChatGPT" never used a word processor? Probably not, this is "HACKER" News, if I type two n-dashes on a website, I EXPECT two n-dashes, otherwise things like HTML comments would break the page. 
    - layer8 11mo ago
      As a hacker, you should have heard of the Compose key, or maybe of Ctrl+K in Vim.
      - hekkle 11mo ago
        The compose key and Ctrl+K in Vim both assume the use of Linux, or janky 3rd party software. Compose is the same argument I have already covered with Windows, you need to enter a cryptic key-combination into the keyboard, which is not intuitive. As for the Vim argument, I'm struggling to work out how to use Vim to type on here? Perhaps you could shed some light? I suppose you could yank-put it, but I fail to see how that is less effort than copy-paste, the other argument I already covered.
    - keybored 11mo ago
      Why would you write to n-dashes? HTML comments use hyphens.
- thwarted 11mo ago
  The compose key on Linux makes deliberate use much easier (rather than automatic replacement which often triggers when I don't want it). There's a compose key utility for Windows, but has some minor annoyances like many input (mouse or keyboard) macro extender applications.
- 3eb7988a1663 11mo ago
  Pandoc has had "smart" typography[0] which generates em-dash and en-dash for a long time. I found a forum post for 2011 where people were discussing em dashes and such. That thread indicates that John Gruber created a Markdown extension in 2004 which was already handling en and em dashes[2]. [0] https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/7.1-typography.html https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/7.1-typography.html [1] https://pandoc-discuss.narkive.com/PHmQaAgM/en-dashes-vs-em-dashes-revisited https://pandoc-discuss.narkive.com/PHmQaAgM/en-dashes-vs-em-... [2] https://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/
- jph00 11mo ago
  On Mac you type opt-shift-hyphen — like this — and on Win/Linux you use a compose key. A lot of people who care about typography/grammar have spent a moment to learn to do this. Once learned, you can use it for the rest of your life.
- keybored 11mo ago
  You have to take a step back. The first part is not about writing prose. It is about consuming it. And all publishers who are mainstream and respectable use proper English symbols. Now they might use ASCII apostrophe instead of the recommended left single quotation mark. But using a single hyphen or two hyphens or three hyphens for an em-dash is out of the question. Literacy starts with consuming texts and doesn’t stop once you have learned to read comfortably. People who consume a more varied selection of prose than, say, programming mailing lists will have seen plenty of em-dashes in their time and won’t balk at people using normal punctuation.
ants_everywhere 11mo ago
It's not just less literate, it's also people who feel the need to be amateur prosecutors. It's the same thing as judging people who wear their hair too long, or wear pajamas on the plane, or who wear pants that are too baggy, or who have children out of wedlock, etc. Some people are deeply convinced that society is on the decline and that they have a mission to ensure everyone else stays in line. It's been that way throughout history.

JKCalhoun 11mo ago

Ha ha, now labeled as old — when on a typewriter it was common to use two dashes as a fake em dash.

BearOso 11mo ago
I don't know when the phrase "em dash" got popular. It was probably due to web development, because, unless you were into typesetting, nobody knew what "em" was. We always just called them dashes--two hyphens make a dash.
- namanyayg 11mo ago
  Typographical fun fact: An em-dash is approximately the width of the letter "M", and an en-dash is the width of a lowercase n! The latter is barely used, but is the right way to indicate dates like 2023-25. The more you know!
- JKCalhoun 11mo ago
  I would go back to the advent of Desktop Publishing. The early Macintosh + Laserwriter really did a number in bringing esoteric terms like "font" to us commoners. Some of us found out we were typography nerds and didn't know it until then.

Buttons840 11mo ago

It's not that hard. Period (.) ends the sentence, comma (,) breaks up the sentence. If the next sentence is closely related, end the sentence with a semi-colon (;). For every other type of break--especially those that resemble the natural and chaotic shifts of thought we all have--use an em-dash. (Oh, and put text you want to be optionally skipped in parenthesis.) Em-dash is probably the most natural punctuation; it best matches the kinds of shifts our brain does when thinking.

Cogito 11mo ago
It may be due to AI proliferation, or the culturural bias I have, but I increasingly find em-dashes jarring. As you point out, authors use them for the "natural and chaotic shifts of thought we all have" and when there are lots of these shifts it feels like I have to keep track of multiple conversations at once. For example, in the article we have: If your goal is to have other people read—and hopefully enjoy—your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. When I read this I instinctively pause the 'main' thought/voice, read the aside, then re-establish my train of thought. In my opinion the sentence reads just as well without the aside: If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. [edit - putting comma back in to break up the long sentence] If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. I think this is the only aside formatted like this in the article. The other em-dashes take the place of pauses in sentences, places I would normally use a comma or semicolon, or are used to introduce a list where I would typically use a colon. Again this is probably a cultural thing, maybe a reaction to AI as well, but I find the em-dash a lot more though-interrupting than the other punctuation choices and I wonder if it's something I'll get used to or not.
- Buttons840 11mo ago
  I would have used parenthesis for that example, since it departs and returns to the main line of thought so cleanly.
- jph00 11mo ago
  IMO the em-dash version is way easier to read in this example, FWIW.

gerdesj 11mo ago

When you feel the need to dive in with a dash (m, n or otherwise), why not stop ... think for a while: consider going in with a colon instead?

thwarted 11mo ago
Emdashes are useful for an embedded appositive phrase, which a colon can't handle the same way.
- gerdesj 11mo ago
  Quite - horses for courses. However: you should pick your weapon with some care.
keybored 11mo ago
You say why not. I say why.

PunchyHamster 11mo ago

Yeah, just writing in Word (and few other) will get your - turned into em dashes. Personally I hate them. Mostly coz of random editors making GNU cmdline options into emdash and so breaking copying but I also think they are ugly, way too long in most fonts

maguay 11mo ago

Agreed. I've used the em dash for well over a decade and love it, but am having to train myself to not use it simply to not appear as though my text is written by AI. At least avoiding the "it's not just that X, it's Y" style that AI loves is easy enough!

zdc1 11mo ago

It's okay. Give it a few years and every writing style will be being used by AI. We'll then be able to use whatever style we like as no one will be able to tell our writing from AI anyway.