3 ms·
Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me
by jesusofsuburbia 10mo ago
Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me
- dxdm 10mo ago> Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me The use of em dashes looks pretty natural to me. This is how they were used before LLMs, and what LLMs learned from. Em dashes have a useful place in written language. I hope we will not lose their utility because people treat them as enough of a signal on their own to automatically question the authenticity of absolutely well-written pieces of text, without giving the matter any further consideration.
- RobotToaster 10mo agoThe reason em dashes raise suspicion isn't usually because of the lack of utility, it's because they're not easy to type.
- barnabee 10mo agoThey're easy to type on macOS and iOS, which covers quite a large fraction of users
- dkga 10mo agoHuman user of em dashes here. I can't tell you the number of times people thought my 100% human-made prose was "AI" because of the em dashes.
- tptacek 10mo ago"Dan" is an LLM. Did you not know that?
- kingstnap 10mo agoNot sure if this is intentional, but "DAN" (Do anything now) was a cute bit of chatbot internet history lol.
- dang 10mo agoShow HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071722 - Aug 2025 (266 comments) + honorary mentions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933 (Aug 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27787448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27787448 (July 2021)