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How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

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31–40 of 492 posts

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#31
post #21

AFAIK most computer keyboards don't have em dashes. Rather than hit ALT+0151 every time, I've always just strung along two hyphens, like: -- Absolutely proper and correct use of em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens is, to me, the most obvious tell of the LLM writer. In fact, I think that you can use it to date internet writing in general. For it seems to me that real em dashes were uncommon pre-2022.

I always use an em dash when possible when I should, and double en dash when I can't, just because I'm that kind of nerd. But it is the case that a double en dash on iOS autocorrects to an em dash, so I'm suspicious of the claim that em dashes are a tell for LLM writing.

Most editors should auto changes a double dash into em dash. I thing Google Docs does for example.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#32
post #8

AFAIK most computer keyboards don't have em dashes. Rather than hit ALT+0151 every time, I've always just strung along two hyphens, like: -- Absolutely proper and correct use of em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens is, to me, the most obvious tell of the LLM writer. In fact, I think that you can use it to date internet writing in general. For it seems to me that real em dashes were uncommon pre-2022.

The engineers of various AIs are probably reading your comment and making adjustments. Or we are both just AIs, as a portion of HN comments are, commenting back and forth about other AIs.

As are super pedantic humans.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#33

Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this? ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

It’s largely the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. You’ve started noticing it because you just learned about it.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#35

Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this? ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

Yes! It's a tell-tale sign something is written by AI.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#36
post #33

Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this? ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

It’s largely the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. You’ve started noticing it because you just learned about it.

yep. been using them for years. others have too. it’s not weird

same thing happened with “delve” — these are just words and grammar, people use them

there is no accurate way to tell whether text came out of a neural network or not

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#37

Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this? ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

Yes! It's a tell-tale sign something is written by AI.

it is not

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#38

Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this? ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

Yes, several of the most popular (and even lesser-popular but newly open-sourced models such as Gemma 3 27b) overuse Em dashes. Even when prompting them to not use dashes, they almost can't help themselves and include them occasionally anyways as it must be part of their learned stylometry. It's just not a common symbol to use at all as most people generally use commas for the same purpose. I can't even remember learning about Em dashes in my college english classes.

Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

#40
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Macs: Hyphen -: - En Dash –: alt - Em Dash —: alt shift -

The default US English Mac keyboard is so extremely good, and has been the way it is for so long, that I remain baffled that other platforms haven't simply copied it. I came to it relatively late in life and it's one of the reasons I wish I'd started using Macs sooner.

This specific key combination is not US keyboard specific. I like how they managed to group characters that are formally similar by binding them to the same keys.

Examples:

en and em are on -

Below are maybe Swiss specific?

~ is on N

@ is on G

| and \ and / are on 7

√ is on V

¥ is on Y and € is on E

∑ on W ( ∑ is a rotated W :)

etc.

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