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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 (-)

#61

Post by tshaddox »

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've been Googling "em dash" and copypasting from the Google results for a solid 15 years now. Long before LLMs.

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

#62

Post by necovek »

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.

While this is true, this is an amazingly silly omission.

Serbian and Croatian XKB keyboard layouts have had em- and en-dashes since early 2000s even if they were not standardized: AltGr (right Alt) + hyphen (to the left of right Shift) produces an em-dash, and press Shift on top, and you get an en-dash.

This is how long I've had them easily accessible on any keyboard (I even have them converted to MacOS keyboard layouts for use with Karabiner).

http://srpski.org/dunav/raspored-c.html

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

#63

Post by crazygringo »

a3w wrote: post #11

> spans pages 128–34. Who omits the 1 from the second number?! That is aweful!

Who keeps the 1?

You write pages 1,003–4, instead of typing out 1,003–1,004 which is just unnecessary.

Works the same with two digits, or even three: pp. 1,899–902.

This is standard practice and arguably clearer.

I've only ever seen it done with page ranges, though. I'm not sure if it's done with year ranges? E.g. 1984–5? Or 1989–92? You work with page ranges constantly in academia, I just don't see year ranges much in any form.

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

#65

Post by agys »

alabastervlog wrote: post #52
agys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah! © is on C (makes sense!)

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

#66

Post by culi »

> If you want to be official about things, use the en dash to replace a hyphen in compound adjectives when at least one of the elements is a two-word compound.

How is a literal dictionary making fun of people who "wanna be official about things" lol. That's the entire basis for dictionaries themselves

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

#67

Post by kingo55 »

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

Combining the various "tells" of an LLM (em dashes, delve, grammatical signs etc) with the context (Reddit comments vs professional setting), you could establish a rough probability it was AI generated. At this point, it's the best we can hope for.

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

#68

Post by necovek »

kingo55 wrote: post #59
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. ;)

As I mentioned above, I've had them easily accessible with a keyboard layout for >20 years on all the systems I've used — the only caveat that I find it really ugly with no spaces around em-dashes, which is usually recommended for English.

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

#69

Post by PhunkyPhil »

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.

Iphones will autocorrect two hyphens to an em dash
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