5 ms·

Shoutout to my English Major comrades who have been using em-dashes forever, and have had to stop so we don't sound like AI. If AI starts use the New Yorker st

Shoutout to my English Major comrades who have been using em-dashes forever, and have had to stop so we don't sound like AI. If AI starts use the New Yorker style diaeresis (umlaut-looking thing when there are two vowels in words like coöperate) I swear I'm gonna lose it.

bob1029 7mo ago
I'd like to see a histogram of my HN em dash usage over time. Maybe someone could get bored and visualize the 2nd order effects described here.
scosman 7mo ago
Agreed. Join me in double-dash em proximates. Shows you manually typed it out with total disregard token count and technical correctness.
- atourgates 7mo ago
  Yes. To be fair, I was always a barbarian who just typed a hyphen in-place of an emdash and figured that was good enough. The only REAL em-dashes in my pre-AI writing are the result of autocorrect.
- sudahtigabulan 7mo ago
  Just yesterday I saw Claude.ai use double dashes in its responses for the first time...
  - Aachen 7mo ago
    Exactly... How long until people figure out that LLMs emulate common writing patterns as their sole reason for being
a4isms 7mo ago
I worked for GitHub for a time. There was a cultural abhorrence of the diaeresis, it was considered reader-hostile and elitist. I refused to coöperate with that edict internally, although I grant that every company has the right to micro-manage communications with the public.
- relaxing 7mo ago
  It is reader hostile and elitist. Is there any good argument in favor of it, or any other house style quirks for that matter, other than in-group signaling?
  - hluska 7mo ago
    You’re replying to a troll - their entire argument was circular and self contradictory.
  - randusername 7mo ago
    It exists to indicate how a word is pronounced. Naïve is a better example IMO, cooperation feels too familiar. Non-native speakers might see something like "nave" instead of "nigh-eve" unless it is clear that there is a stress that breaks out of the diphthong. I don't think style guides are (usually) about absolute correctness, but relative correctness. A question is asked, a decision needs making, someone makes it, and now a team of individuals can speak with a consistent voice because there's a guideline to minimize variation.
  - akramachamarei 7mo ago
    IIRC it's use is to distinguish vowels that belong to separate syllables with vowels which form a diphthong. I think this could be beneficial to language learners, to give them a hint that cooperate is pronounced "ko ah puh rayt" instead of "ku puh rayt", and likewise naïve as "nah eev" than "nayv" or "nighv".
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
anotherlab 7mo ago
I used to use em-dashes and en-dashes in my work emails and other writings, but stopped using them when they became AI markers.
OJFord 7mo ago
> New Yorker style diaeresis I was going to say that I respect it, but find it utterly absurd that they do that. But your comment made me look it up again—I had no idea it was just obsolete/archaïc (except in the New Yorker), I'd thought it was a language feature their 'style' guide had invented.
- Aachen 7mo ago
  Dutch does this. Idea is idee, with the e doubled to show it's a long vowel. We make plurals by adding "en". One idee, two... ideeen? Idewhat? So the dots differentiate where the sound changes (long e to short e): ideeën. Approximate pronunciation could be "ID an" Fun fact: if you have the audacity to correctly write an SMS, you can fit about 70 characters in an SMS. It converts the whole message into multibyte instead of only adding dots to the one character. Or if you use classic spelling for naïve in English, same issue. (We don't dots-ize that in Dutch because ai is not a single sound like ee is, so there's no confusion possible. This is purely English.) I believe in Hanlon's razor so it's probably a coincidence that whoever cooked up this terrible encoding scheme made carriers a lot of money, but I do wonder if this had anything to do with the bug still existing to this day!
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
mghackerlady 7mo ago
I genuinely didn't know those existed, I will subsequently be adding them to my repertoire

bob1029 7mo ago

I'd like to see a histogram of my HN em dash usage over time. Maybe someone could get bored and visualize the 2nd order effects described here.

scosman 7mo ago

Agreed. Join me in double-dash em proximates. Shows you manually typed it out with total disregard token count and technical correctness.

atourgates 7mo ago
Yes. To be fair, I was always a barbarian who just typed a hyphen in-place of an emdash and figured that was good enough. The only REAL em-dashes in my pre-AI writing are the result of autocorrect.
sudahtigabulan 7mo ago
Just yesterday I saw Claude.ai use double dashes in its responses for the first time...
- Aachen 7mo ago
  Exactly... How long until people figure out that LLMs emulate common writing patterns as their sole reason for being

a4isms 7mo ago

I worked for GitHub for a time. There was a cultural abhorrence of the diaeresis, it was considered reader-hostile and elitist. I refused to coöperate with that edict internally, although I grant that every company has the right to micro-manage communications with the public.

relaxing 7mo ago
It is reader hostile and elitist. Is there any good argument in favor of it, or any other house style quirks for that matter, other than in-group signaling?
- hluska 7mo ago
  You’re replying to a troll - their entire argument was circular and self contradictory.
- randusername 7mo ago
  It exists to indicate how a word is pronounced. Naïve is a better example IMO, cooperation feels too familiar. Non-native speakers might see something like "nave" instead of "nigh-eve" unless it is clear that there is a stress that breaks out of the diphthong. I don't think style guides are (usually) about absolute correctness, but relative correctness. A question is asked, a decision needs making, someone makes it, and now a team of individuals can speak with a consistent voice because there's a guideline to minimize variation.
- akramachamarei 7mo ago
  IIRC it's use is to distinguish vowels that belong to separate syllables with vowels which form a diphthong. I think this could be beneficial to language learners, to give them a hint that cooperate is pronounced "ko ah puh rayt" instead of "ku puh rayt", and likewise naïve as "nah eev" than "nayv" or "nighv".
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]

anotherlab 7mo ago

I used to use em-dashes and en-dashes in my work emails and other writings, but stopped using them when they became AI markers.

OJFord 7mo ago

> New Yorker style diaeresis I was going to say that I respect it, but find it utterly absurd that they do that. But your comment made me look it up again—I had no idea it was just obsolete/archaïc (except in the New Yorker), I'd thought it was a language feature their 'style' guide had invented.

Aachen 7mo ago
Dutch does this. Idea is idee, with the e doubled to show it's a long vowel. We make plurals by adding "en". One idee, two... ideeen? Idewhat? So the dots differentiate where the sound changes (long e to short e): ideeën. Approximate pronunciation could be "ID an" Fun fact: if you have the audacity to correctly write an SMS, you can fit about 70 characters in an SMS. It converts the whole message into multibyte instead of only adding dots to the one character. Or if you use classic spelling for naïve in English, same issue. (We don't dots-ize that in Dutch because ai is not a single sound like ee is, so there's no confusion possible. This is purely English.) I believe in Hanlon's razor so it's probably a coincidence that whoever cooked up this terrible encoding scheme made carriers a lot of money, but I do wonder if this had anything to do with the bug still existing to this day!
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

mghackerlady 7mo ago

I genuinely didn't know those existed, I will subsequently be adding them to my repertoire