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.
How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
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Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#32AFAIK 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.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#33Somewhat 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.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#34$ python -m this | grep '--' -
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#35Somewhat 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.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#36Somewhat 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.
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 (-)
#37Somewhat 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 (-)
#38Somewhat 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.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#39Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#40Earlier 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.
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.