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

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

#51

Post by tkcranny »

sandbach wrote: post #23

Robert Bringhurst¹ prefers the en dash in the context of setting off phrases: "The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. "Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal…

Presently re-reading this book, The Elements of Typographic Style. It’s one of the few books I’ve gone out of my way to get a physical copy of – it’s just beautiful.

And I totally agree, space-set en dashes are vastly superior to em. I dislike the way it connects the word more closely to the word in the next clause than the phrase itself.

E.g. He left—no explanation. Vs. He left – no explanation.

To me, left—no feels like a weird gluing together than a separator for a different section.

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

#52

Post by alabastervlog »

agys wrote: post #40
alabastervlog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, mostly the same on my US keyboard, except a couple like "@" (that's shift-2 on basically all US keyboards, and is printed on the key) and |/\, which are more prominent on US keyboards (two simply have their own keys, no shift modifier, even). I get the © symbol for option+g (which still kind-of makes sense!)

I appreciate that the designer of the layout clearly attempted to make some kind of mnemonic connection to the degree they could. Makes it easier to discover and remember the key-combos, even without a cheat sheet.

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

#53

Post by tomrod »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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 wrote for a magazine during college days a few decades ago that uses the Chicago manual of style. I still use em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens regularly. They don't show up as such in markdown, but they are effectively: one dash for hyphen, two for em-dash, and one with spaces surrounding it for en dash.

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

#55

Post by jsheard »

salynchnew wrote: post #9
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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.

Most obvious tell of the former/current Stripe employee, imho.

What's the significance of Stripe here?

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

#56

Post by kbenson »

bangaladore wrote: post #26

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.

If it's posted through a publishing platform (not just a commend on one or on a public site), it's very possible they do an automatic conversion of some of the common cases. That could also be filtering down to comment boxes and stuff, I'm not sure.

That's not to say that generated content doesn't use them, just that using them as an indicator might require a bit of nuance based on where you're seeing them.

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

#57

Post by alabastervlog »

bangaladore wrote: post #26

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.

I've been employing em-dashes extensively since I went on a JD Salinger binge circa 2002. Also, "incidentally", for the same reason. I use "Nb" a lot, from reading a bunch of DFW years ago. Oh, and that very-precise construction he does with "which" all the time, I stole that.

Before LLMs, I think em-dashes mostly signaled that you read books and paid attention to details, to the extent they signaled anything.

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

#58

Post by chatmasta »

dkdcwashere wrote: post #36
pavlov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m not sure the same happened with “delve.” I saw an analysis of paper abstracts showing a clear uptick of “delve” starting with the mass-adoption of ChatGPT. Maybe it suddenly became a trendy word — especially in paper abstracts — or maybe more paper abstracts were edited by ChatGPT.

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

#59

Post by kingo55 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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.

More sophisticated clients require we use dashes correctly. I first encountered it pre-pandemic, so in professional contexts it's not a sure-fire signal of LLM use — Should you see em dashes correctly used in the Hacker News comments or Reddit, for that matter, then it's pretty reliable tell... Usually. ;)

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

#60

Post by [deleted] »

awestley wrote: post #35
bangaladore wrote: post #26

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.

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