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I don't comment much but I have read everything that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, and because of him, have always used em-dashes on my writing. I think I even saw
by Iuz 6mo ago
I don't comment much but I have read everything that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, and because of him, have always used em-dashes on my writing. I think I even saw some memes in circles that discuss his work when people started realizing GPT used them a lot...
- bb88 6mo agoI like the em-dash as well as it provides visual space more than just a "-" or a ";" or a ", and".
- MikeTheGreat 6mo agogenuine question: How could you tell they were em-dashes? Like, I could see some people noticing that the book they're reading has dashes that are a bit longer than normal, but what made you think "That must be it's own thing, separate from a normal dash" as opposed to something like "In this font the dashes are very long"?
- Iuz 6mo agoHe uses it a lot, so it didn’t take long for me to notice that the dash was longer than usual. At that point, it felt less like a font quirk and more like a deliberate stylistic choice. I also recall that one of the translators mentioned his use of dashes.
- nagaiaida 6mo agowell, hyphenation will most likely insert a lot of regular dashes for easy comparison to rule out "this font is blessed with uncommonly long dashes" and the differing uses of both en and em dashes will cluster along grammatical lines (with em dashes separating clauses and en dashes relating concepts or bounds) which ought to eventually make it clear even to someone who initially bins those together separate from hyphens.
- pinusc 6mo agoIf you know the difference between em dash, en dash, and hyphen, you start seeing it everywhere—whether thet are used correctly or not. Books tend to have correct typesetting, so if you see a dash used as an em dash ought to be used, and if it looks kinda long, you can assume it's an em dash. AFAIK often manuscripts are submitted either with hyphens or --- in place of em dashes and then the editor or typesetter fixes it. Also, it's called em dash because it's as long as the letter m (as a rule of thumb), so it's usually an easy visual comparison. Finally, a typeface with hyphens as long as em dashes would be terrible and quite noticeably wrong!
- ranger_danger 6mo agoIt's always funny to see people arguing that em-dash use is indicative of LLM usage, yet they don't realize where that training came from in the first place.
- palmotea 6mo ago> It's always funny to see people arguing that em-dash use is indicative of LLM usage, yet they don't realize where that training came from in the first place. The em-dash is indicative of AI usage when it shows up in contexts where it doesn't belong. Like informal context like forum comments and emails (though "smart" substitutions do complicate the picture a bit). I'd only be funny if they argued it indicated AI usage in context where it does belong, like formal writing.
- JKCalhoun 6mo agoInformal contexts are where I get to practice my writing in general. In terms of punctuation, I don't make a distinction. (I just say "bullshit" a lot more in the informal contexts. Durn, I did it again.)
- lamasery 6mo agoBut the em-dash is a pretty informal mark... I'd tend to re-structure my sentences to avoid it more often in a formal context, than an informal one. It's what you reach for either for a specific effect, or because it's the least-disruptive way to keep writing without having to go back and edit mid-sentence, and end up with something that scans OK. It's super-informal.
- palmotea 6mo ago> But the em-dash is a pretty informal mark... I think you have to make a distinction: there's using a dash as you describe and using the actual em-dash character. Without an smartquotes-type autocorrect-type feature (which admittedly is common in certain apps/platforms like Outlook and Word), an actual em-dash is awkward to type. I'd expect someone using it informally to just use a regular dash (-) or two (--). I think you're automatically in a pretty formal writing context if you care if you use an em-dash character or not. Which brings up an interesting idea: would Microsoft turn off it's smartquotes-type autocorrect, because now it makes you look like a dumb AI-user? Probably, if they cared about their users. But I doubt they will because they're so into hyping AI that "Microslop" is a thing.
- lamasery 6mo agoI got my heavy m-dash use from Salinger, many years ago. When I find some distinctive habit of an author I'm reading, and it's to my taste, I often rob them.
- illiac786 6mo agoI love em dashes. I always use it wrong, as a “pause for effect”. But it makes me smile.