[iansteyn]

It’s a real pity to me that em-dashes are becoming so disliked for their association with AI. I have long had a personal soft spot for them because I just like them aesthetically and functionally. I prided myself on searching for and correctly using em, en, and regular dashes, had a Google docs shortcut for turning `- - -` into `—` and more recently created an Obsidian auto-replacement shortcut that turns `-em` into `—`. Guess I’ll just have to use it sparingly and keep my prose otherwise human.

[jasonvorhe]

Don't change your behaviour because some corporations made questionable decisions.

Your readers won't care about the dashes as long as the texts read like they had human origins and you have something to tell.

[keiferski]

Unfortunately a lot of contests etc. are anti-AI usage without having a formal system for detecting it. In practice that means anyone using a lot of em-dashes will be flagged by a reviewer as AI-likely.

[iamdamian]

I would say that using a lot of em-dashes was always bad writing. You want to use them sparingly if you want them to have impact.

That said, yes, keep using them (and using them well!).

[iansteyn]

This is true. I actually originally started using em-dashes because a high school english teacher called out my overuse of regular dashes (where they technically should have been em-dashes, but he didn’t know that) in the place of other types of transitions… which prompted me to research the punctuation properly and consider other ways to transition thoughts too.

[jasonvorhe]

Then these contests are run by lazy people and they aren't worth the effort of submitting your work to.

[whynotmakealt]

If I found em-dashes and other patterns like its just not X but Y and all the other things we correlate with AI, I might call a person using it.

I don't understand the purpose of using LLM's to write articles unless someone wants to be the middleman of slop and if that's the case, I'd rather cut middlemans and get slop directly from the AI models, instead of pasting the output of what chatgpt generated, give me the prompt and maybe temperature/other settings if need be to make it more reproducible but the prompt itself could be enough smh

I am not saying you should change your writing style, but at the same time, you have to understand, if someone writes like AI, Chances are that we are too tired of looking too deep into it to find if its written by AI or not, we are tired of it & so you must understand our or anybody's frustration if they call out someone's writing as AI.

For those using AI to write articles/etc. : If you are passionate about something, write about it, write what you want, how you want and you will be proud. But if you use LLM, you will constantly be called upon and frankly, it reduces the purpose of writing.

For code, there is a debate that code is just an means to an end (which is to do stuff like scripts etc.) but there is no end to writing, for what? for more views/etc., there is no point in getting such attention or anything considering it would just be negative attention if I or anyone found AI writing.

Not sure why people use AI text generation for articles etc. Idk.

This is my alt but when I had first started out on HN, I thought my english was fine but then somebody pointed it out and I try to fix my grammar and now its second nature to me writing.

I would be curious to know the reasons as to why people write text stuff with AI in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me since the other side would use their slop to counter your slop, at that point just create a tldr post, why strech an article in more words than unnecessary (I feel like I also write a lot of filler words / yap personally but alright, atleast you know a human is writing this), I don't get the point of writing longer if you aren't even writing it, is it to get SEO or, is the end goal money like all things?

[DonHopkins]

Well if you write paragraphs of redundant repetitive parenthetical text yourself (like I tend to do), that meanders around and repeats the point again and again (oh there I go again), like both you and I obviously do (and I'm doing now), then LLMs can be useful for condensing and sharpening it.

For example, your post could have been just one paragraph and said the same thing. Do you purposefully write so verbosely as a virtue signal of authenticity?

And no, readers can't just ask the LLM to reproduce the same slop, because they don't have the verbose, redundant (there I go again) original source text that it's condensing. And even if they did, they would not bother reading it, because it's tl;dr and full of typos.

Nobody wants to read pages of repetitive human generated slop, either.

PS:

>I thought my english was fine but then somebody pointed it out and I try to fix my grammar and now its second nature to me writing.

Since you asked for somebody to point it out:

Use it's when it's a contraction for "it is" or "it has," and use its when it's a possessive pronoun showing ownership. A helpful trick is to try replacing the word with "it is" or "it has" in the sentence; if it still makes sense, use "it's".

Full disclosure, in case you can't tell: the paragraph above was LLM generated. Did you find it helpful, was it tl;dr, or did you dislike "its" style?

[whynotmakealt]

Yes, I can agree that the words I use can be redundant sometimes, I am a human and I have its flaws, I really like to type long essays, Yeah.

To be really honest, I can understand your view-point even if it conflicts with mine if you aren't being offensive, since personally, I think that there is no point of this offense-defense thing.

Off topic but How's your day going man?

Listen, I will tell you why I write in the way I write, You might say this authenticity but I believe it being honest, I want to give someone access to the thoughts I am thinking the way they come, so I would consider it raw.

Usually its not for them but for me, for knowing how far or backwards I would go in life. I write this because I anticipate reading it in the future but I sure haven't read as much in other places.

HN does feel like a place where someone could write 3 paragraphs to some basic question and still feel accepted or read , to be really honest.

> Nobody wants to read pages of repetitive human generated slop, either.

You raise a good point, I have been a bit selfish in writing these posts, I write it for myself and not for the other person, I thought the other person would appreciate my honesty of typing what I write but the point of it being human slop might make sense too lol

> And no, readers can't just ask the LLM to reproduce the same slop, because they don't have the verbose, redundant (there I go again) original source text that it's condensing. And even if they did, they would not bother reading it, because it's tl;dr and full of typos.

Sorry but either its me but I can't seem to understand what you mean by this? Like, do you mean nobody would bother pasting human slop to get tldr's ?

I don't know what to say since I am not getting what you are trying to tell me here but I am curious for sure.

> Since you asked for somebody to point it out:

I didn't really ask but sure, I will take it. I guess I make less mistakes overall though so that's nice. I am not perfect and I am comfortable knowing that yet I think that my writing could be sharpened, yes. There is no denying in that.

> Full disclosure, in case you can't tell: the paragraph above was LLM generated. Did you find it helpful, was it tl;dr, or did you dislike "its" style?

I would still would've preferred your real message even if it could've been choppy to be really honest.

I feel like If I might not leave an imprint on the world, might as well leave the fingerprint saying I was there and this is a way which helps me feel that way. It is (theraptic?) even to write long sentences, they sooth me. I do it for myself. I wasn't trying to virtue signal though, personally its more that even after anything, I still feel like using LLM's in article formations etc. is just a cheap shortcut to what?? , to me its the fact that I can point to this article and be decently comfortable knowing that I wrote it and not an LLM.

I just can't trust LLM texts that much and the only reason I am giving yours so much is because I would appreciate the opportunity to grow and I am willing to read any criticism you provide me if I can meaningfully work on.

[krzrak]

I feel you... For 30+ years of my life I prided myself for writing without typos and other mistakes (without autocorrect), using lots of bullet points, dashes, and words such as "delve into" or "underscore".

Now I find myself intentionally adding typos and other msitakes, and using less sophisticated language, just to not be accused of using AI.

[hdgvhicv]

It’s been about 30 years since prose editors like word started underlining spelling mistakes in red. I don’t get typos when writing formal text in a keyboard. One handed on a touch screen phone with “auto correct” causing issues is another thing, but not for published articles.

[matsemann]

I don't mind that in a "proper" text where it's actually useful and fun to read something with a flair. But maybe it has always irked people in short form (forum comments etc), but they've never just called it out until now? I do sometimes read something that gives me an "iamverysmart" feeling, as if the author used a thesaurus to find a synonym for half the words to sound clever but it just makes the whole thing incomprehensible.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Americans famously have a median 6th grade reading age, so words like "delve" and "perspicacity" aren't going to win friends and influence people.

Ironically, AI writing is too literate. It reads like clunky pastiche to literate readers, but it's still using words and constructions less literate readers haven't seen before.

[topaz0]

The distinctiveness of LLM language comes from overuse of specific words, not because it has a particularly sophisticated vocabulary. Some of the words it overuses may be considered sophisticated by some people, but that's not what makes it identifiable (or what makes it grating). It's still not hard to distinguish your voice from LLMs by being thoughtful about style at all.

(Edit: corrected (unintentional) typo)

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's not just [thing], it's [more dramatic thing.]

You can customise the default style over an impressive range. Most people don't, so most AI writing is distilled essence of Failed LinkedIn Marketer, even when that style conflicts hilariously with the content.

[topaz0]

Part of it is the guilt-by-association with the other bad writing habits of LLMs, but I think a lot of it is just that LLMs genuinely overuse them, and that homogeneity is grating just like it's grating when you notice a text reuses a particular noticeable word or whatever. As a fellow em-dash user, I have sometimes noticed myself overusing them too, and revised accordingly, starting well before the proliferation of this particular cancer.

So I think you can keep using em-dashes without being associated with LLMs as long as you reserve them for particularly effective/tasteful occasions.

[damnesian]

In my mind, their rightful place is transcription of written speech where the speaker pauses, and either inserts an island idea, or changes course. The comma doesn't suffice, because it's bridging an initial idea with expounding on the same idea. But so many times in written text I see it abused, lazily employed, because the author used a sentence fragment for effect, or wanted to amp up the pause and drama when a comma or, hell, even a semi-colon would have served the purpose better.

The advent of the generic AI writing style has had one good effect on my own work: making me take an unflinching look at my own laziness in writing. Now I tend to clean things up while at the same time try to inject some personality in order to NOT be dismissed as AI.

[nandomrumber]

I agree, parentheses are not only used incorrectly in a lot of online writing, they’re also ugly.

[avazhi]

The em dash is just one of a group of traits that make something obviously written by a bot. If you use em dashes in conjunction with good writing then nobody will give a shit.

[eastbound]

Cmd + “-“ = –

Cmd + Shift + “-“ = —

Let’s spread the word until everyone fancy uses them, and then those who criticize text for coming from LLMs will be ridiculed by our ridiculous skills.

[Etheryte]

That's interesting, for me those shortcuts are with option, not command. On my laptop, the first shortcut you wrote down is used to zoom out.

[latexr]

It’s ⌥ instead of ⌘, and those exact shortcuts depend on keyboard layout. You posted the US version, but others reverse the em and en dashes.

[withinboredom]

Or on Linux with the compose key, it is also different.

[iansteyn]

I tried some of these today, unfortunately it seems they’re not universal across programs.

[lm28469]

While you're automated out of your dashes people are automated out of their jobs, relax you'll be ok

[Mawr]

Try out semicolons instead; they're never used but fun to play with too!

[Xorakios]

semicolons seem to more accurately separate follow-up thoughts than em-dashes to my meathead, and I asked Perplexity/Comet this morning: what is easiest to process a whole list of options to save processing power and give most accurate results.

line breaks was first; semi-colons was second.

(and yep, I goofed around with both those ;)