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by bradstewart 297 days ago
Interesting, thanks. I've always been a fairly "heavy" (vs other people) user of the emdash after a high school english teacher made us use one in every paper to learn how they worked (along with a colon), and I've been a fan ever sense.

The "it's not ... it's" phrasing though definitely stands out as a bit odd when repeated.
1 comments
morleytj 297 days ago
Yeah, I also tend to have heavier usage of them. I'm not exactly sure why I do though, I don't have a particular incident like yours in high school. I think I just read too many blog posts as a teenager, haha.

It is a bit of an odd repetition, right? I wonder if anyone has done analysis on usage of that construction by year.

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dpoloncsak 297 days ago
>I wonder if anyone has done analysis on usage of that construction by year.

This just hit the front page of HN for like an hour or two today. Not that exact construction (It's not just x, -it's y) but this suggests that (English) speakers are starting to use 'AI Buzzwords' in speech. (Words like delve, intricate, etc.)

I think it's safe to extrapolate that the construction would also start to appear more often in human-written and spoken content as well, but I'm sure there's other factors at play.

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045500 Relevant article: https://news.fsu.edu/news/education-society/2025/08/26/on-sc... Relevant paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00238

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