[d4mi3n]

I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated. Been using them for years—it's just `alt+shift+-` on a Mac keyboard and I find them more legible in many fonts compared to the simple dash on the typical numpad.

It's so sad to me that good typographical conventions have been co-opted by the zeitgeist of LLMs.

[elevation]

LLM fatigue is real. It's not just em-dash — it's the overall tone of the writing that clues people in. But if your viewpoints and approach are unique, your typesetting won't raise suspicion of machine-generation, except in the most dull of readers. Just be you and it will be fine.

If you'd like more tips on writing I'd be happy to help.

[natpalmer1776]

This is art. If it weren't so difficult to capture the full context I would literally print and frame this comment.

Edit: I take that back. I'm going to print and frame this comment. It stands on its own well enough, and I'm the only one who's going to see it.

Second Edit: Took a bit to get it formatted in a way I liked, but I have officially placed an order for my local Walmart photo center

https://ibb.co/0NpVMgh

https://ibb.co/F9N9tJM

[rout39574]

You, sir, are evil. I mean that in the most complementary of manners.

[fsckboy]

on HN, the problem is not LLMs, it's everybody talking about LLMs incessantly

[escapeteam]

You‘re absolutely correct!

[dang]

Just do it anyway—I always have, and always will.

Well, I haven't always—just for maybe 20 years.

[mkoryak]

Someone should ban this bot, I've seen it before and it's always pretending to run this place

[cirelli94]

It doesn't look like a bot. created: August 18, 2007 karma: 36696

[jules-jules]

It was a joke. Dang is the site-wide moderator

[burnt-resistor]

;)

I defer to Merriam-Webster and/or Harbrace (rather than TCMoS) on punctuation usage.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...

Magical signal panacea searching is ultimately fruitless. Other ways to make bot interactions more difficult, there are policy and technological obstacles that could be introduced. For example, require an official desktop or mobile app for interaction. And then for any text copy-pasted, demarcate it. And throw an error message for any input typed inhumanly-fast. Require a micropayment of like $0.10 to comment. While these things would break the interaction style and flexibility for a lot of innocent human users, these would throw big wrenches into some but not all vulnerabilities of bot interactions.

[inkyoto]

Before the wide adoption of Unicode in mainstream operating systems, quite a few people used -- (two ASCII minus signs) to differentiate between a hyphen and a dash (of either pedigree), and some people used -- in emails and online where a dash was required.

Most think that it came from TeX, which had -- (for an en dash) and --- (for an em dash, although I don't think I have ever observed it out in the wild outside TeX), but in fact, the habit well predates TeX and goes all the way back to typewriters where typists habitually hit two hyphens in a row to approximate an em dash. The approximated em dash was described in hard-copy manuscript preparation rules such as The Chicago Manual of Style.

So, if you have ever used a typewriter or TeX, you can claim an even richer than 20 years’ heritage of using the em dash.

[edanm]

I'm exactly the opposite. It'd been on my todo list for years to one day learn the difference between the different dashes. I kept putting not doing it.

Then came LLMs, and there was so much talk of them using em dashes. A few weeks ago, I finally decided it's time and learned the difference. (Which took all of 2 minutes, btw.) Now I love em dashes and am putting them everywhere I can! Even though most people now assume I'm using AI to write for me.

[bigyabai]

In a lot of ways, it feels like this is simply a fight for recognition that the Mac keyboard supports emdashes.

This wouldn't be an issue if mobile users or Windows users were exercising it too, but it's just Mac owners and LLMs. And Mac owners are probably the minority of instances where it is used.

[acheron]

It works on mobile iOS too. Either the hold down - or just typing -- and letting it autocorrect will work.

[fernandotakai]

i've always used double dashes -- because i once i setup a osx shortcut to change those into em-dashes, but i never bother to setup this again in other computers.

so now, i just use double dashes for everything.

(shit, i wonder when llms will start doing this instead of normal em)

[abustamam]

Then we start using triple dashes to throw them off and then when they catch onto that we can reclaim em dashes!

[jedberg]

Hey @dang, I think I found another AI bot you need to ban.

[vanschelven]

I read a text from the 60s by my grandfather this week and seeing an emdash made the LLM alarm in my head go off... Had to really stop myself before I went all "and you" on him

[epistasis]

My thoughts exactly. As somebody who has always loved to use em-dashes and bulleted lists to organize my thoughts, this is heartbreaking.

It's like being named Michael Bolton and watching a singer rise in fame named Michael Bolton.

Why should I change my style?

[dredmorbius]

Or an exceedingly principled and well-respected award-winning journalist named "Alex Jones":

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_S._Jones>

(No, not that one.)

[latexr]

> It's like being named Michael Bolton and watching a singer rise in fame named Michael Bolton.

For those who don’t know the reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI1NfFExOSo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space

[bigstrat2003]

> Why should I change my style?

Office Space jokes aside, you shouldn't. I think it's very important to be yourself and refuse to let people pressure you into changing for no good reason. I am not an em dash user myself, as it's a pain to generate when there's no key on the keyboard for it. But if I were, you best believe I wouldn't change my style one bit. People can accuse me of being an LLM if they wish, but that's no skin off my back.

[Terretta]

> good typographical conventions

Here since 2010 in this account, I use em-dashes.

It's easy—and effective—to type using “Opt Shift -” on a Mac.

Oh yeah, left and right “curly quotes” as well, and the occasional …

> It's so sad

Don’t forget «’» — but ain’t nobody got time for that!

A few more to reclaim typography: https://howtotypeanything.com/alt-codes-on-mac/

[jug]

I switched to semicolons... They look similar enough in use to string things together. I'm sure AI is coming for those too though, and that will be a grim day because those are my last stand.

[pianom4n]

There are times when an em dash can be used in place of a semicolon, but I don't think that's the usual LLM usage. Instead it's replacing a replacing a comma, colon, or period.

Unless you're talking about restructuring your sentences to allow for a semicolon; that's fine.

For example that semicolon could have been an em dash, but I don't think it's the type that LLMs over favor.

[CuriouslyC]

My interpretation of LLM em-dash use is that it's like an aside, which is pretty much always going to be weird if converted to a comma since the punctuation was providing un-relatedness information.

[vldx]

I did as well; funny though, I see uptick in its usage along the board.

[embedding-shape]

People will accuse of all types of stuff, regardless if you use em-dashes or not. The way I write apparently is familiar to some as LLM-jargon they've told me, I'm guessing because I've spewed my views and writings on the internet for decades, the LLMs were trained on the way I write, so actually the LLMs are copying me! And others like me.

But anyways, you can't really control how people see your stuff, if you're human I think the humanness will come through anyways, even if you have some particular structure or happen to use em-dashes sometimes. They're so easy to prompt around anyways, that the real tricky LLM stuff to detect by sense and reading is the stuff where the prompter been trying to sneakily make them more human.

[asplake]

LLM adopting conventions (typographical or otherwise) is what they do, right? The idea that anyone should then have to change their behaviour is ridiculous, as is the whole conversation, really.

[wongarsu]

The issue is that LLMs adopt a very particular style that is a mix of being very polished (em-dash, lists-of-three, etc) that is reminiscent of marketing copy, and some quirks picked up from the humans curating the training data somewhere in Africa

If AI was writing like everyone else we wouldn't be talking about this. But instead it writes like a subset of people write, many of them just some of the time as a conscious effort. An effort that now makes what they write look like lower quality

[d4mi3n]

I think this is interesting in that I feel, grammatically and structurally, LLMs often generate _higher quality_ text than most humans do. What tends to be lower quality is the meaning of said texts.

Say what you want about marketing-isms of your typical LLM, they have been trained and often succeed at making legible, easy to scan blobs of text. I suspect if more LLM spam was curated/touched up, most people would be unable to distinguish it from human discourse. There are already folks commenting on this article discussing other patterns they use to detect or flag bots using LLMs.

[Sharlin]

I mean, yes, LLMs write grammatically perfect, well-structured English (and many other languages prevalent in their training sets). That's exactly why many people are now suspicious of anyone who writes neat, professional-style English on the internet.

[d4mi3n]

That's the rub though, isn't it? This feels like a form of self-censorship in response to some kind of shibboleth born of pattern recognition.

[asplake]

Exactly

[wgm]

I totally agree. When I use em-dashes in my /family iMessage thread/ I get accused of having used ChatGPT to write my reply—my one-sentence reply about dinner plans. Dear Lord.

[Aachen]

I wish my family knew what an em dash is. That's gotta count for something!

[OJFord]

Funnily enough I've actually started using them a little — it made me realise how much more legible/likable I find them.

(Until a few years ago I probably mostly only saw them in print, and I suppose it just never occurred to me that I liked them in particular vs. just the whole book being professionally typeset generally.)

[adamsilkey]

I feel the same way. I've used em-dashes in my writing forever, and I was always particular about making sure they were used properly (from a typography standpoint with no surrounding spaces).

But now, I have to be so picky about when I use them, even when I think it's the perfect punctuation mark. I'll often just resort to a single hyphen with spaces around. It's wrong, but it doesn't signal someone to go "AI AI AI!!"

[alt227]

Dont worry, soon LLMs will be trained to avoid using em dashes and then all will be right in your world again!

[ceroxylon]

That was my reaction when LLMs first started getting "good"

I turned to my friend and said "They've co-opted the structure of effective language!"

[stmw]

the destruction of the em-dash is really a shame; and "--" is under suspicion..

[anematode]

I've sometimes taken to using spaced en dashes, which I haven't seen in many AI comments: https://anemato.de/blog/emdash

[BrandoElFollito]

Exactly. I got that habit from LaTeX and like it because it brings us closer to real typography.

And I will still use them -- fully aware that some people will complain about AI and whatnot.

[OrangeMusic]

I would add a disclaimer to the end of all my posts.

(Disclaimer: the use of em-dashes doesn't prove this was AI-generated — I can assure you I wrote this myself.)

[krapp]

For all anyone knows, you just prompted the LLM to include that, or had a script append it.

[IncreasePosts]

You're absolutely right. Not being able to communicate in your own unique style is not just sad, it is incredibly frustrating.

[alienbaby]

I continue to write like I always have done, and if people think it's AI I really couldn't care less.

[bigstrat2003]

Based.

(I know it's a bit low effort, but if ever something called for "based" it's this.)

[rcarmo]

It’s not even the key combo, iOS and autocorrect will do it for you.

[TacticalCoder]

> I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated.

I've typeset books (back in the QuarkXPress days, before Adobe's InDesign ruled the typesetting world) and never bothered with em-dashes. Writing online is, to me, a subset of ASCII. YMMW.

But the one thing I don't understand is this: how comes people using LLM outputs are so fucking dumb as to not be able to pass it through a filter (which could even be another LLM prompt) that just says: "remove em-dashes, don't use emojis, don't look like a dumb fuck".

Why oh why are those lazy assholes who ruin our world so dumb that they can't even fix that?

It's facepalming.

[selridge]

I mean, LLMs aren’t making people sniff around for typography as though that’s a reliable proxy for humanity.

Em dashes, semicolons, deftly delving. It’s all just so…facile. We might as well tell ourselves we can tell it’s shopped from the pixels, having seen some shops in our day.

[basch]

are there really places that a comma, super-comma; or (parenthesis) dont work roughly as well? I find the em-dash mildly abhorrent, even before this all.

[mroche]

> super-comma

This is the first time I've ever heard the character ";" referred to as such. It's always been "semi-colon" to me, is this a region/culture difference?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I find it interesting.

[xdennis]

> super-comma

I would have assumed it's a synonym for apostrophe. super-comma <-> upper-comma, with super meaning upper, like in superscript.

[basch]

I think of it as supersedes the comma in the order of operations. You work inward, or outward (depending which way you read the list.)

[chasd00]

no it's always been semicolon, the "super-comma" comes from describing how to use it. "It's similar to a comma but like a super comma."

[jjgreen]

Huh? I've always understood that the clause after the semicolon is peripheral; the meaning of the whole sentence does not change without it.

[basch]

thats one use for it. supercomma is another.

[basch]

same character, used differently?

i call it a super comma when its separating a list with commas within the sets.

so if i am listing colors like green, blue, red; foods like apple, orange, strawberry; and seasons like winter, summer, fall.

it's one use case for an em-dash, because whatever you have inside it has commas in the phrase.

square and rectangle situation. a supercomma is a subset of semicolon.

[randusername]

it's a cadence thing for me

Em-dash matches how I speak and think-- frequently a halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop-- so I use them like that.

Em-dash matches how I speak and think (frequently a halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop) so I use them like that.

Em-dash matches how I speak and think, a halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop, so I use them like that.

[cgriswald]

A poster commented that he read parenthetical remarks in an old-timey voice (I’d guess the trans-Atlantic accent). I love that idea. But for me they read almost as if you’re saying them under your breath (or a character is breaking the fourth wall and talking to the camera quietly). I read them but my brain assigns them less importance.

Em-dashes keep everything on the same level of importance in my brain.

Commas don’t feel as powerful. To be fair to the comma I’d probably do this:

Em-dash matches how I speak and think: A halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop. So I use them like that.

Edit: I accidentally used an em-dash in the word em-dash. Interestingly HN didn’t consider changing the dash to be a change in my text so didn’t update it. I had to make a separate change and take that change out for my dash change to stick.

[basch]

For me, a sequence of sentences, strung together by commas, is more in line with how I output thought, and better matches what I believe my speech pattern is.

[CuriouslyC]

I dislike parens because they're hard to read, mostly. Em-dashes are so open and legible.

[bubblewand]

I picked it up from Salinger. I find that if I can't eradicate parenthesis by some other means, or if it's more effort to do so than I want to spend, em-dashes usually replace them without doing any harm and aren't quite so ugly, aside from being useful in other cases. In particular, parenthesis at the end of a sentence are awful, while a single em-dash does a similar job much more neatly and looks totally natural.

[peyton]

Yeah it’s for abrupt changes in thought. It’s used in literature. Maybe you prefer organized writing.

[pclmulqdq]

Em-dashes are a bit too conversational for formal prose, so they have always been looked down on aside from usage by AI.