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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 (-)

#161

Post by lxgr »

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. ;)

I'd like to have the record show that I've been using them since before LLMs :)

Not sure when I started; my guess is that I got into the habit of using them in LaTeX when writing my thesis, and then at some point realized that they are easily reachable on standard macOS keyboard layouts (via "option" + "-").

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

#162

Post by lxgr »

n2d4 wrote: post #4
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.

Alt+hyphen or alt+shift+hyphen is an endash/emdash. You may not have been aware of it because it's so subtle, but many people (including myself) used emdashes long before 2022 (edit: apparently only on Mac, see reply below)

That's one of my favorite features of macOS keyboard layouts, but it's so close to one of my least favorite ones – option + space inserting a non-breaking space.

I almost never want that, and when typing "space, en dash, space", it happens quite easily and is usually impossible to tell visually.

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

#163

Post by lxgr »

op00to wrote: post #76
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.

My LLM prompts all have “don’t use em dashes or semicolons ever” when I send the output to someone else. ;)

I get not using em/en dashes, but semicolons don't really have an alternative in many cases (other than rephrasing), do they?

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

#165

Post by lxgr »

mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

> EM dashes break things, such as sentences or thoughts

Some style guides recommend "space, en dash, space" for this, and I prefer that myself – mainly because some software doesn't treat em dashes correctly as word separators for double click selection purposes.

For example, I'm pretty sure that at least some Kindle models would highlight both the word before and after the em dash when selecting one of them, which makes using the dictionary very annoying.

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

#166

Post by citrus1330 »

pavlov wrote: post #33
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.

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

No, it's not. AI uses em dashes far more frequently than the average human.

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

#167

Post by LegionMammal978 »

divbzero wrote: post #160
mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

I prefer the dedicated minus (U+2212) over the hyphen-minus (U+002d) for mathematical use because they look different in most font faces. Are there cases where the dedicated hyphen (U+2010) is preferred over the hyphen-minus?

G. Brandon Robinson swears by U+2010 for hyphens in groff's Unicode output [0], but I see it as a hypercorrection. The most common convention by far (among authors who use Unicode and care about dashes) is to use U+002D for hyphens and U+2212 for minus signs. Not even the Unicode Consortium uses U+2010 for hyphens in its documents, and I'm not aware of any major organization that does.

As far as appearance goes, almost all fonts I've looked at make U+2010 identical to U+002D (i.e., they don't put any 'minus' into the 'hyphen-minus'), but a few make U+2010 a smidgeon shorter.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38121765

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

#168

Post by citrus1330 »

starfezzy wrote: post #110

We need a blog post documenting the ironic trend of people—themselves NPCs, actual human bots, just now realizing the em dash exists despite seeing it hundreds if not thousands of times before LLMs—flattering themselves by suggesting that anyone who understands the language at above a 5th grade level must be an LLM.

You aren't special for using em dashes, and it doesn't make someone an NPC to notice that AIs frequently make use of them.

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

#169

Post by wruza »

divbzero wrote: post #160
mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

I prefer the dedicated minus (U+2212) over the hyphen-minus (U+002d) for mathematical use because they look different in most font faces. Are there cases where the dedicated hyphen (U+2010) is preferred over the hyphen-minus?

Intl.NumberFormat also prefers it, but then you can't paste negative numbers into most financial software, calculators, spreadsheets. Even back into inputs on the same webpage, if it does custom number parsing. Even though accepts U+2212 as a minus, it turns it into a regular minus when you spin it down to -2.

It looks much better though and more visible: −1 vs -1. I wish hyphen was a separate symbol from the ascii start, or that monospace fonts didn't tend to shorten "-" cause it makes little sense in monospace anyway.

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

#170

Post by energy123 »

mmooss wrote: post #142

Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember: * Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker , cut-and-dried , 212-555-5555 . * EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.) * EM dashes break things, s…

The em dash is now a GPT-ism and is not advisable unless you want people to think your writing is the output of a LLM.
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