[Iuz]

I don't comment much but I have read everything that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, and because of him, have always used em-dashes on my writing. I think I even saw some memes in circles that discuss his work when people started realizing GPT used them a lot...

[MikeTheGreat]

genuine question: How could you tell they were em-dashes?

Like, I could see some people noticing that the book they're reading has dashes that are a bit longer than normal, but what made you think "That must be it's own thing, separate from a normal dash" as opposed to something like "In this font the dashes are very long"?

[nagaiaida]

well, hyphenation will most likely insert a lot of regular dashes for easy comparison to rule out "this font is blessed with uncommonly long dashes" and the differing uses of both en and em dashes will cluster along grammatical lines (with em dashes separating clauses and en dashes relating concepts or bounds) which ought to eventually make it clear even to someone who initially bins those together separate from hyphens.

[pinusc]

If you know the difference between em dash, en dash, and hyphen, you start seeing it everywhere—whether thet are used correctly or not. Books tend to have correct typesetting, so if you see a dash used as an em dash ought to be used, and if it looks kinda long, you can assume it's an em dash. AFAIK often manuscripts are submitted either with hyphens or --- in place of em dashes and then the editor or typesetter fixes it.

Also, it's called em dash because it's as long as the letter m (as a rule of thumb), so it's usually an easy visual comparison. Finally, a typeface with hyphens as long as em dashes would be terrible and quite noticeably wrong!

[Iuz]

He uses it a lot, so it didn’t take long for me to notice that the dash was longer than usual. At that point, it felt less like a font quirk and more like a deliberate stylistic choice. I also recall that one of the translators mentioned his use of dashes.

[ranger_danger]

It's always funny to see people arguing that em-dash use is indicative of LLM usage, yet they don't realize where that training came from in the first place.

[palmotea]

> It's always funny to see people arguing that em-dash use is indicative of LLM usage, yet they don't realize where that training came from in the first place.

The em-dash is indicative of AI usage when it shows up in contexts where it doesn't belong. Like informal context like forum comments and emails (though "smart" substitutions do complicate the picture a bit).

I'd only be funny if they argued it indicated AI usage in context where it does belong, like formal writing.

[JKCalhoun]

Informal contexts are where I get to practice my writing in general. In terms of punctuation, I don't make a distinction. (I just say "bullshit" a lot more in the informal contexts. Durn, I did it again.)

[lamasery]

But the em-dash is a pretty informal mark... I'd tend to re-structure my sentences to avoid it more often in a formal context, than an informal one. It's what you reach for either for a specific effect, or because it's the least-disruptive way to keep writing without having to go back and edit mid-sentence, and end up with something that scans OK. It's super-informal.

[palmotea]

> But the em-dash is a pretty informal mark...

I think you have to make a distinction: there's using a dash as you describe and using the actual em-dash character. Without an smartquotes-type autocorrect-type feature (which admittedly is common in certain apps/platforms like Outlook and Word), an actual em-dash is awkward to type. I'd expect someone using it informally to just use a regular dash (-) or two (--).

I think you're automatically in a pretty formal writing context if you care if you use an em-dash character or not.

Which brings up an interesting idea: would Microsoft turn off it's smartquotes-type autocorrect, because now it makes you look like a dumb AI-user? Probably, if they cared about their users. But I doubt they will because they're so into hyping AI that "Microslop" is a thing.

[lamasery]

It's easy to type, and even easy to discover, on the default Mac keyboard layout. Until recently, the main thing employment of the actual M-dash in web posts indicated was that the user was more likely than not typing their posts on a Mac—not for-sure, but better than even odds, despite Macs having a much smaller share than half the market.

[ranger_danger]

> when it shows up in contexts where it doesn't belong

I have known people that personally used em-dashes in all the wrong places way before AI... entire emails would just be paragraphs-long run-on sentences filled with dashes.

[yencabulator]

That doesn't explain "The Rise of the Em Dash".

[bb88]

I like the em-dash as well as it provides visual space more than just a "-" or a ";" or a ", and".

[lamasery]

I got my heavy m-dash use from Salinger, many years ago. When I find some distinctive habit of an author I'm reading, and it's to my taste, I often rob them.

[illiac786]

I love em dashes. I always use it wrong, as a “pause for effect”. But it makes me smile.