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No AI has been used in this project (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

I use the em dash a lot! It's easily accessible on my mobile keyboard and I have a hotkey to put it in the clipboard on my laptop so that I can paste it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

    you still probably don't use it nearly as much as LLMs do. It's every third sentence with an LLM, and those sentences will have 2 or 3 em dashes. . The average em dash use when it was at its peak was like 1 every 200-500 words from what I remember. With LLMs it's like 1 every 40 words.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

    Well, em dashes are commonly used in pairs to make distinct logical clauses; where one is used, two often are. So em dashes per word count isn't a great indicator of LLM use, particularly considering that different subject matter warrant different amounts of distinct clauses—most noticeably when in lists.

    Some examples in conversational English:

    • "I work with him—he's my employer—we met at a café in town."
    • "...Carl is in Phoenix, Arizona; Jesse—a friend of mine—lives in Elmira, New York; Geoff is in Toronto..."

    All that said, LLMs do use em dashes slightly more than I in the majority of cases.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    As a human who - like most humans - has not taken the time to figure out which Spock pinch maneouver on my keyboard makes a — (just copy-pasted yours this time), I just use a regular dash instead - I feel that it communicates 99% identically while saving me brain-cycles better used for other things.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    I make sure to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes where they belong. In ASCII-only environments, I mark an en dash (–) with a double hyphen and an em dash (—) with a triple hyphen.

    I would contest the idea that the brain operates on cycles. It is much less organized than that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    I would contest the idea that the brain operates on cycles. It is much less organized than that.

    I would agree, but it's a workable short-hand / analogy for most of my use-cases.

    I (feel like I) know and remember more today than I ever have, but starting around age 50 I must admit, I am also forgetting things and have quite possibly already forgotten more than I currently know. One hopes one is hanging on to "the important stuff..."

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago

    Em dashes per word count is how the expert on linguistics article I read counted it so I’m gonna go ahead and trust the expert. It wouldn’t matter either way. If the LLM is using it like humans then the count would be the same.

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