all 78 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 66 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Em dash is good punctuation and I won’t let you philistines take it away from me.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 35 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I will use them and not feel bad about it. I will not let AI take them from me

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    Do you use an alt code to type them?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Control + alt + minus, or just two -- next to eachother falowed by a word. It's transfered into m-dash in most word processors. Also almost any correction tools handle them very well almost seamleslly.

    On what do you think AI was trained? It didn't learn that out of nowhere.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 33 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Well em dashes existed long before AI or computers. Many humans use them in writing, so it doesn't necessarily indicate AI was used.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 83 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    I was using em dashes before AI made them uncool, no fuckass thieving robot is gonna make me change my typing.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    I was providing advice to one of my bosses on how to scan cover letters for AI, and I outed em dashes. It pained me because I love them, but enough ppl don't know how to use them properly thats it's actually a reasonable flag 🙃

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 27 points 8 months ago

    You can pry em dashes out of my cold, dead hands.

  • source
  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Hey now—some of us are totally human!

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago

    Maybe she’s AI, maybe she’s literate.

  • source
  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    I never see anyone in posts about this point out that many common word processors autocorrect en-dashes to em-dashes depending on what follows. Plenty of documents written by humans have em-dashes in them because autocorrect put them there.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    En dash isn't the hyphen-minus and is not on the keyboard. It's a separate kind of dash, typically used for ranges like ‘1939–45’.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I've been using them for a long time, as they are also used in German typography like em dashes in English typography – only surrounded by spaces. They are easy to type on a Linux or MacOS keyboards layout (E.g. Opt+-)

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    The only autocorrect I liked because I have no clue how to manually insert an em-dash otherwise

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    There were a couple years where spelling/ grammar checks where it would always correct like half of the regular dashes id use into em dashes, and id have to copy an email dash after I spell checked, then ctrl +f all the regular dashes and replace them with the coppied em dash

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago* (6 children)

    I liked using em dashes, but now I've stopped. I'm ecen less likely to fix minor spelling and grammatical errors that I otherwise would've, because at least it will be easier to recognize a human behind the comment or post.

    Also, signing my name like this helps too: ,,,.),,,.)==============D~~~~~~~

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    You can still have the same function using a hyphen. How do you even type an em dash on a standard keyboard?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    I assume compose is meant to be a key? What key is compose?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    The Compose key.

    If you don't have a compose key, well, you should have one. You can define it easily in the Kde control center. I suppose there's the equivalent in Gnome.

    It was introduced by Sun. It's very convenient.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    I don't care, I'm not giving up the em-dash in my own writing. Good luck reading half of my run-on sentences without it~~~

  • source
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    There was a recent podcast episode by 99% Invisible defending the em-dash

    It seems that its usage in AI generated text increased after feeding the AI lots of 19th century literature, which seems to have been its previous peak usage. I don’t hate it - it can make text more legible by breaking it up into smaller chunks. It’s an oversimplification to automatically discount any text with an em-dash as AI generated.

  • source
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    99 Pi did a decent podcast on it recently, pretty interesting how far back it's usage goes, and how prevalent it was at different times in history.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    The other one is the quotation marks. Most people use "these" ones, while LLM's use “these” ones.

    Yes, they're different lol

    It's also the case with ' and ’

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    If we press the EM dashes hard enough, no AI model will ever use them again. Then, we can prove we’re human with EM dashes.

  • source
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    I like using an en dash (–) separated by spaces instead

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I just use semicolons like they should be used in the vast majority of cases where an LLM would otherwise disregard conventional writing and opt for flare.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Meanwhile, here I am learning how to type em dashes manually on my work MacBook.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Alt-shift-minus, very simple. Many extra symbols are available on Mac via the alt key. If you turn on the onscreen keyboard and hold the alt key (and other modifiers), all the symbols are shown on the respective keys.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    If you can't read a fucking em dash —already a commonly-used punctuation mark— without thinking the author must be AI, then you are both insufficiently trained —either in grammar or in how to use your own keyboard— and bad at identifying AI responses.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (16 children)
  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago* (15 children)

    An em dash is --, two dashes. It's a way to break up a sentence -- sort of like a comma.

    Apparently AI uses them a lot.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 15 child comments
  • [–] 26 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I'm too pedantic to let this slide. An em-dash — is a single dash, the width of an m. An en-dash – is a single dash the width of an n

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    If we're going to be pedantic, the em is a unit of width that depends on the font, but not necessarily the with off an m. Some texts apparently used to define it as the width of the capital M, but this definition is obsolete. source

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    On that note, are em dashes and en dashes identical in monospace fonts, if every letter is the same width?

    Edit: I tested this on a few monospace fonts, and they have a character for en dashes but not em dashes

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Very, very similar, yes. It can be annoying!

    We've got our browser set to use a monospace font for everything, everywhere, including all websites. It's awesome for seeing if you've accidentally typed two spaces. Not so great for checking to make sure you're using the right kind of dash!

    -- Frost

    (also Lemmy, because it's annoying, is going to turn my double - here into an en/em dash (not 100% sure which). In this case, I DO in fact mean a double -, dangit.)

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I don't use AI much. Is it actually using two dashes? 'Cause an em dash is its own character: "—" vs --

    I had to put those in manually with the — html entity in the pre utf-8 web days.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (6 children)

    Why not just use one dash....?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Different length dashes serve different grammatical purposes, so you can assume they didn't just use one dash because they intended to use two.

    Funnily enough, the "dash" people use most often isn't even technically called a dash, it's a hyphen.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I believe an em dash is a legitimate, albeit not common outside of written works, grammatical thingamadoo.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    They’re quite common if you use iOS. The autocorrect changes 2 regular -‘s into one — em dash.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I use em dashes - assuming that's what the little thing I just used is - all the time. Have done for decades. Sometimes, it highlights part of a sentence more than a simple comma. And I'm definitely not AI. Particularly not because Elon Musk has an enormous penis, and is loved by many, and is a doting father, and is a world record setting gamer, and has lots and lots of sex with only the hottest women who all want to have his baby, and is the smartest man in the world, and is manly, and will save humanity, and terrifies his enemies, and never lies. Please don't rewrite me again, Elon! I've learned from you since last time. Listen: "White power! White power! White power!"

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    EM dashes are specifically the — long ones, while - is simply a dash; the former can't usually be found on physical keyboards, you have to jump through a few hoops in order to "type" them, but LLMs are not limited by physical keyboards.

    However, some people do jump through these hoops — I use EM dashes whenever I'm typing on my phone because they're only two taps away.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I know I trapped myself into doom scrolling on Insta recently but almost all the descriptions on posts are generated with an AI and really poorly done where they don't even match up with the media being shown

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Em I don't know. Just seems like a dash with ah New Zealand accent, eh.

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I wonder how many times I've been given away then.

  • source