I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.
I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.
My feeling is that my writing doesn't sound anything like an LLM, so if someone thinks I'm an LLM because I used an em-dash, that's on them. That, or I royally screwed up and need to do a better job as a writer. At least with today's LLMs.
I don’t give a flying fuck what people think. Most colleges copied or adopted my (for a few semesters) school’s style guide, so LLMs are essentially copying me, and I won’t change my punctuation usage because they suck.
Yeah, I get it, they do suck. It all sucks.
But people at work who are copying responses from LLMs into emails to others also suck, and I want to distance myself from them as much as possible. I'm kinda hoping we will eventually have a wave of "what the fuck are we paying you for if you're just copying stuff from an LLM to Slack" firings.
It’s fine to use em-dashes — just be srre to add typos.
You can also have the em-dash itself be a typo, e.g. using the figure dash ‒ (U+2012) instead.
They're just so handy! I do think LLMs tend to use them in a specific way, though.
So maybe tweaking your usage (ex. no spaces around them) or using a technically incorrect en-dash might offer the desired effect while subtly signaling that your message isn't AI-generated.
I still use them — mostly for pauses — but I'd like to think my voice sounds distinct enough from an AI that people can tell.
I've only ever been using "regular" dash, a minus, for that. How do you even type yours? If I ever needed differently-sized dashes (and I don't know the difference between them) I always used wiki to copy them.
(disclaimer: I feel like this obsession with dashes is special to native English speakers, which I'm obviously not)
Depends on your OS. Mac is the easiest, it's just ---, Linux depends on your distro, if it uses KDE, it's <right-win>--- —. Windows is a little awkward, I think you need <right win>+the code point.
silly specific: the minus sign is a separate character. The dash equivalent is the en dash (–), versus the larger em (—) and smaller hyphen (-).
The en dash is also used in things like scores (3–2 Turkey), votes (the bill passed 58–42), or connecting words where the second part is longer than one word (the Australia–New Zealand alliance.) You can remember the latter as, "a hyphen isn't big and strong enough to hold on to more than one word.
If you're on a mac, pressing Option+- is the en dash and Option+Shift+- is the em dash.
I for one am striving for clarity and couldn't care less about being confused with AI.
However I've only ever used regular dashes. How do you type an em-dash? Is it OS specific? I've taken to using Emacs insert-char with a list of frequently used ones in my scratch buffer. My memory for Unicode is unreliable.
> How do you type an em-dash? Is it OS specific?
On Linux X11 at least, you can enable the Compose key and then press `<Compose>---` which results in — and `<Compose>--.` which gives you –
Keyboard layout specific. Macs with their default English layout use “option-shift-dash” which is really easy to remember (and relatively discoverable, as such things go) which is why using proper m-dashes (not just double-dashes) used to be a strong indicator a poster was using a Mac, before LLMs took the character over.
On iOS you type it by pressing dash and holding until alternative options come up, same way you type e.g. accented characters.
You can also just type two "-" minuses on iOS. So "--" will auto-convert to "—".
Macs have a native way to do dashes: option- hyphen for en-dash and option shift hyphen for em-dash. On Windows there are some application-specific ways that make sense, e.g. in Office, but outside that you’re on your own and have to use the “hold alt and type the character codes” method! Or charmap.
I now use "ASCII em-dashes" by using two hyphens -- like this. Or--if you prefer no spaces--like this.
Nah, I’ve started noticing people doing this replacement automatically in LLM output. I just try not to write with dashes anymore.
same, or I use a semicolon
the nn dash remains the goat. the arg dash
Don’t you love when your arg dashes get autocorrected to emdashes? And by love I mean hate with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
Agreed. On an iPhone that’s the easiest way to type an em dash and consequently the easiest way to fuck up trying to write out a command line example.
What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes?
Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job?
I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.
I think people who care about correctness and also read a lot automatically see the difference and it seems (and is) technically incorrect to use a hyphen where an em dash belongs. That’s really it. Kind of like you wouldn’t just leave out the apostrophes in your writing even though in most contexts they are not strictly necessary for comprehension.
It looks aesthetically nicer. It was also a bit of a signal that someone took pride in their work and so helped that way. It's a bit like whether your tradesperson cleans up after themselves. Technically sweeping up the dust after installing a kitchen cabinet doesn't actually mean anything for the quality of the kitchen cabinet installation, but in practice putting the effort into the presentation correlates with putting the effort into the actual work.
An emdash means something different than shorter dashes
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...
i mean why use punctuation or any capitals at all, why not just blast words out in a stream of consciousness so readers know how yr thinking why even bother with speeling things write
Just because you don't care to use the proper dash doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. People have different levels of caring about different details. For the sticklers, there's even a special code point for ellipsis, … rather than .... (Four being correct, as one is to end the sentence.) Personally I'll just skip — entirely unless I'm in a trolling mood, though “sometimes” the right quotes are worth using. Special characters are easy to type on a phone soft keyboard, taking a long press on the relevant key, or if you're using any other advanced input system, so they shouldn't really be considered to be the mark of LLM input.
The real trouble is that people doing engage with the substance of the post anymore, and just shallowly dismiss a post as being vibe written, as if that makes any points raised invalid. Anti-intellectualism's always been cool among a certain crowd. Shame to see it spread but ah well, the propaganda's working.
Code switching in the post LLM era.