[PTOB]

Two of the things I love intersect here: good punctuation and engineering documents.

AI stole the em-dash from my toolkit.

I have memorized a group of useful Alt-codes for engineering documents. They include symbols for diameter, delta, degrees, dot product, and trademark among others. If you're of a certain age, you will remember how useful Alt+255 was for folder naming.

At the cusp of the 21st centuries, I added the Windows Alt-code for the em-dash. Compared to parentheses it is less jarring. Commas are dainty things. I use the em-dash, and I am human.*

* I confess that I also use semicolons; I still claim to be human.

[AStrangeMorrow]

I know, I find myself in this silly situation where I have to adjust my writing style because I write like an AI: always loved my bullet points and dashes.

At work I also always tended to send slightly longer but structured answers. I found that it allowed to skip over the irrelevant sections and focus on what the changes are. Eg a list of changes with in the format -> bullet point -> change name -> change details. So people could easily focus on changes they cared about. Instead of a dense paragraph that people often just skip.

Hell I even found myself wanting to add a typo just to give a more human fell, or skip final “.” to make my text imperfect and more human. That’s getting silly

[dathinab]

never understood why -- => em-dash auto completion is only a think in some subset of application instead of being a standard behavior for (display) text inputs

[sionisrecur]

Personally, I configure my keyboard map to write the em–dash with alt+- and the middle dot · with alt+.

[tavavex]

Adding it to all text-editing environments could be problematic due to the decrement operator --

Many keyboard layouts for other languages use the right Alt (AltGr) key for less common symbols. Something like AltGr+(-) could work for the em dash.

[dathinab]

that is why I said

(display) text inputs

maybe I should have called it "natural language text input"

text inputs for (non NLP) machines are a special case

and for some rare niche edge cases it's not like you can't "undo auto change" (if proper implemented)

still the default for all WYSIWYG editors and text field in browsers should be to do it (with the option to switch it off)

PS: Also in case it isn't clear it's `<(?:\w)>--<(?:\w)>` to `\1<em-dash>\2` auto completion. I.e. `---` for markdown isn't affected, nor is `i--` or `--i` or similar. It kind makes most "programming language" edge cases non problems.

[7bit]

Because the EM Dash is not universally used. In Germany we use the EN Dash. That's also why the proposal is dumb. It has the typical US-centric view you would expect from a typical American.

[eurticket]

I too loved using em dashes and alt codes like alt-149, my beloved, before LLMs dissolved that pleasure.

Something as simple as an alt code makes me contemplate. As the tech progresses it makes me dislike AI and those that shove it down our throats more and more.

I feel like the sum of my interests and skills from simple, Photoshop edits or learning my most used alt codes, is a lot like how the cellphone replaced some of our ability to remember phone numbers.

The machine does the thing, so why do humans need to do the thing? Or even learn about the thing?

I'm sure there are better examples than the cellphone eliminating the phonebook in my head, but I'm just thinking what are the unseen damages to humans handing over work to machines?

:::: The phone remembers the number, but what if I don't have the phone?

As a previously more involved automation career oriented person, I've heard all the catch phrases of saving the worker, and kill the repetitive tasks. It doesn't look like that ever happens, unless it's something the business world doesn't understand completely, yet have the power and authority to shape. Disgusting.

I think a better example: Everyone thinks about "how should I word this email, what's the tone, who is the audience?" Should I check every detail and work my editing skill muscle or should I simply run an idea, rather than try to form it myself, through an LLM?

Maybe it will sound better if the grammar is perfect and I will have a more effective point rather than how the message was crafted.

No harm in more effective communication, but I do foresee the serious impact the moment people that are relying on the tools lose Internet connection.

We must use these muscles, even if to first formulate a terrible, errored, humanized version. Not to look down upon ourselves with discontent when the AI that corrects it, through their wealth of stolen source material, but to have something to fall back on when the power goes out.

I digress, these RFCs are a good proposal without any strength. Just look at the theft to train these models. The models will strive to become useful to those that rely on them and just adopt the new way of writing.