I used a lot of these, but actually stopped due to my text sometimes being called out as chatgpt output. I also thorw in the occasional spelling mistake. If a piece of text on reddit/x has "–" (not "-") in it, you can be 95% sure it's an LLM.
How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
281–290 of 492 posts
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#282Here'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'm not a native English speaker, but don't you use the ";" in English ?
To me, it feels like it is the same purpose as the EM dashes.
And I discovered the EM with ChatGPT, I've never seen it before.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#283In LaTeX simple to remember hyphen (-), an en-dash (--), and an em-dash (---).
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#284Here'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.
It's infuriating that people are drawing this conclusion. LLMs pick up on em dash usage because professional and skilled writers use em dashes. They're a consistently useful, if niche, part of the literary toolkit.
But, no, now it's a problem because the majority of people's experience with writing is graded essays. And because LLMs emulate professionals, it's now a red flag if students write too much like professionals. What a joke.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 m…
I grew up in the UK, and have always used space, minus, space. The first keyboard I used was my dad's typewriter, and I don't recall it having any 'dash' other that the minus sign.
en-US style is a single em-dash. en-GB style is a single en-dash with spaces on either side.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Emily Dickinson wept—
Ha, good point, and an interesting question: What kinds of dashes did Dickinson intend? It's a hard one to answer: We could look at published Emily Dickinson books from the time, but did Dickinson really pay that close attention to or have that much control over the type? We could look at Dickinson's actual personal documents, but if they were handewritten, distinguishing dashes could be difficult even if there was i…
I imagine it would have been up to the typesetter to make the call. The conventions for dash usage are fairly straightforward. You use em-dashes for asides, en dashes for ranges, and hyphens for most other cases. Its easy to figure out the right character from context (apart from en ranges vs hyphen ranges).
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#287Here'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'm not a native English speaker, but don't you use the ";" in English ? To me, it feels like it is the same purpose as the EM dashes. And I discovered the EM with ChatGPT, I've never seen it before.
Dashes surround a sub-clause - something like this - which is like a parenthetical addition to a sentence that could stand alone without it; semi-colons (';') connect a further sentence or part of one where perhaps a full-stop and additional word could have been. They also sometimes separate list items following a colon, especially if the things listed are longer sentences perhaps themselves containing commas that'd otherwise be ambiguous.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#288I used a lot of these, but actually stopped due to my text sometimes being called out as chatgpt output. I also thorw in the occasional spelling mistake. If a piece of text on reddit/x has "–" (not "-") in it, you can be 95% sure it's an LLM.
That is an interesting observation. I wonder what percentage of the training text data for LLMs contains proper dashes, since a large part of it is user-generated content.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 m…
I grew up in the UK, and have always used space, minus, space. The first keyboard I used was my dad's typewriter, and I don't recall it having any 'dash' other that the minus sign.
I was under the impression that you do "-" for hyphen, "--" for En dash, and "---" for Em dash. IIRC, LaTeX (or maybe the editor, it has been some time) even helpfully changes that for you to the correct dash.
Re: How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
space, minus, space is on the same level as manually typing two spaces after a period
How so? One is the only way to approximate an en or em dash on a typewriter or in a charset that doesn’t have one, the other seems like a workaround of a typesetting bug at best.
-, --, --- is, IIRC, how it is done in LaTex and would be exceedingly simple to do on a typewriter. That being said, to break up sentences I use " -- " because I think it looks nicer than "---". I'll go now ;)