411–420 of 492 posts
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 refuse to care about this. A single dash is all I will ever use. I see no possible reason to use the other two.
I don’t care about the length of the mark, but I did find this idea useful. Prone to excessive detail, I often find myself with a parenthetical inside of parenthetical. The developer in me insists on 2 closing parentheses. But it looks weird and nerdy. Although, using an em dash instead is probably just as nerdy. > Dashes are used inside parentheses, and vice versa, to indicate parenthetical material within parenthet…
I wish it was more popular, it neatly indicates meaning so very well.
Hyphens - I'm normal, breaking up thoughts. En / Em - I'm an AI or I'm using AP style guide to write articles.
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.
The lack of em dash usage in popular culture speaks more about typical people than it does about whether a text's author was an LLM. In fact, the average person has never even noticed—let alone considered—that the em dash exists. If they've read for 20+ years, they've seen at LEAST hundreds of them. Imagine being an NPC (a human bot), flattering yourself with the thought that people who understand the language are la…
See, e.g., Boss Szabo's blog: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-many-tradition...
Two chained hypens, as was pretty much the norm back then.
And did you just call me an NPC?!? It's not a matter of "understanding the language" at all. It's a matter of convenience and of a sort of evolved convention.
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.
"Hello," said John, "how are you today?"
You'd see:
— Hello — said John — how are you today?
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 the em dash has spaces around it -- as seen in AP style -- it was probably written by a real human, because that's how it comes out most conveniently on a word processor.
But if the em dash has no spaces around it--Chicago style--there's a good chance you're looking at LLM slop.