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by alvah 22 days ago
I was downvoted a few weeks ago for making this exact point. Humans can and do use em-dashes occasionally, but given that you have to go digging for the key combination, you're not using it every 3rd sentence like every AI model does.
1 comments

> but given that you have to go digging for the key combination

Except you don’t. If you’re on an Apple OS, by default doing -- (two hyphens) auto-substitutes for an em-dash.

Also, the key combination isn’t even hard. Depending on the layout you’re using, it’s either ⌥- or ⌥⇧-. My fingers press that (and the appropriate combination for apostrophes too) without me having to think. Those ⌥ and ⇧ symbols (and many more) I have mapped to text snippets.

We’re using computers, these things are trivial to do and customise, you don’t have to “hunt” for anything.

Except you do, if you are an average user, i.e. not self-selected into the HN bubble.