> I love using em dashes
Keep using them. If someone is deducing from the use of an emdash that it's LLM produced, we've either lost the battle or they're an idiot.
More pointedly, LLMs use emdashes in particular ways. Varying spacing around the em dash and using a double dash (--) could signal human writing.
The solution is clear: Unicode needs cryptographically signed dashes and whitespace characters.
Tied to what?
Show us a way to create a provably, cryptographically integrity-preserving chain from a person's thoughts to those thoughts expressed in a digital medium, and you may just get both the Nobel prize and a trial for crimes against humanity, for the same thing.
It was a joke.
Ya think?
Honestly, these days, I am less and less sure.
Why don't you come say that to my face?
It was a joke that aimed too high I guess, that LLMs can't yet fake face to face interaction.
Finally, a use case for blockchain!
it's a shibboleth. In the same way we stopped using Pepe the frog when it became associated with the far right, we may eschew em dashes when associated with compuslop
I never understood why so many people would yield their symbols and language that quickly and freely to others they dislike.
In other words, I really hope typographically correct dashes are not already 70% of the way through the hyperstitious slur cascade [1]!
[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-...
The alternative is… what? ‘Defending’ against the use of Em-dashes by LLMs? Or people reacting to that?
You might as well be sweeping a flood uphill.
Tilting at windmills at least has a chance you might actually damage a windmill enough to do something, even if the original goal was a complete delusion.
Unfortunately LLMs are pretty inconsistent in how they use em dashes. Often they will put spaces around them despite that not being "correct," something that's led me astray in making accusations of humanity in the past.
Depends on the style guide you’re following, apparently: The AP style guide says space around them[0]. Chicago Manual of Style says not to[1].
0: https://www.prdaily.com/dashes-hyphens-ap-style/ 1: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/H...
Thank you! I usually use THIN SPACE on each side of my em dashes (Compose Space Minus in https://github.com/kragen/xcompose ), but on HN that gets bashed to a regular space.
There’s also the difference between the conventional EU/UK style (spaced en-dash) vs. the common US style (unspaced em-dash).