Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too • Hacker News Board

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#31

Post by Freak_NL » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #22

Ok... that title should have a comma, not an em dash. If you're going to complain about having them being removed, you have to use them properly at least. And then " It seems I have two choices now—keep using em dashes with a sort of stubborn, curmudgeonly pride until all my clients stop exchanging money for words, or start writing incredibly long run-on sentences, like this, with commas all over the place … and mayb…

There is, of course, quite a bit of tongue-in-cheekiness in that article.

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#32

Post by pwdisswordfishz » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

iagooar wrote: post #23

As a non-native English speaker, I will not be mistaken as AI for a while. Occasionally, I will introduce a small typo just to make sure people don;t think this is AI.

AI makes typoes all the same.

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#33

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #22

Ok... that title should have a comma, not an em dash. If you're going to complain about having them being removed, you have to use them properly at least. And then " It seems I have two choices now—keep using em dashes with a sort of stubborn, curmudgeonly pride until all my clients stop exchanging money for words, or start writing incredibly long run-on sentences, like this, with commas all over the place … and mayb…

[deleted]

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#34

Post by xxs » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #22

Ok... that title should have a comma, not an em dash. If you're going to complain about having them being removed, you have to use them properly at least. And then " It seems I have two choices now—keep using em dashes with a sort of stubborn, curmudgeonly pride until all my clients stop exchanging money for words, or start writing incredibly long run-on sentences, like this, with commas all over the place … and mayb…

I like ellipses, they are best to convey my train of thought.

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#35

Post by SOTGO » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #9

I don't get the "em dash = AI" thing. MS Word and iOS have been autocorrecting em dashes for years now. Right? Am I the crazy one?

There's enough places where em-dashes are inconvenient to type that I find it to be a reasonable indicator, particularly on the web. I don't think most people know how to generate an em-dash with a hotkey, so if I see one in a Reddit comment for example there's a high likelihood that the comment was either LLM generated or at least copy-pasted from somewhere else. Generally speaking in the past I observed a low prevalence of em-dashes on the internet except in more formal writing, so if I see an em-dash in a context where I ordinarily wouldn't expect one I do get suspicious. It's the same thing with the green check emoji, it's possible that a regular user typed it, but pre-LLM I can't recall ever seeing them, so these days I automatically assume it's AI generated content

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#36

Post by pwdisswordfishz » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

alterom wrote: post #29

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #9

I don't get the "em dash = AI" thing. MS Word and iOS have been autocorrecting em dashes for years now. Right? Am I the crazy one?

Long-press on the dash on mobile (in Google keyboard at list) gives you two em-dash options. ...yeah, I guess people who don't know how to write are now assuming I use AI to generate my thoughts. It's still so damn easy these days to spot AI writing — it's hamstrung by the milquetoast limitations imposed by its corporate masters, particularly even it comes to the default prompt. And don't get me started on the use of…

No, they are not two em-dash options.

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#37

Post by uhoh-itsmaciek » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

alterom wrote: post #29

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #9

I don't get the "em dash = AI" thing. MS Word and iOS have been autocorrecting em dashes for years now. Right? Am I the crazy one?

Long-press on the dash on mobile (in Google keyboard at list) gives you two em-dash options. ...yeah, I guess people who don't know how to write are now assuming I use AI to generate my thoughts. It's still so damn easy these days to spot AI writing — it's hamstrung by the milquetoast limitations imposed by its corporate masters, particularly even it comes to the default prompt. And don't get me started on the use of…

>Long-press on the dash on mobile (in Google keyboard at list) gives you two em-dash options.

One is an em-dash (—); the other is an en-dash (–). See, e.g., https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-... for an overview.

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#38

Post by bitwize » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

I've started using em dashes in—among other places—my HN posts, just to spite the clankers.

Or is this just Wintermute manipulating my behaviors for its own ends?

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#39

Post by sodapopcan » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #22

Ok... that title should have a comma, not an em dash. If you're going to complain about having them being removed, you have to use them properly at least. And then " It seems I have two choices now—keep using em dashes with a sort of stubborn, curmudgeonly pride until all my clients stop exchanging money for words, or start writing incredibly long run-on sentences, like this, with commas all over the place … and mayb…

i guess you are saying that writers cant take creative freedom in their writing bending the rules to prove a point i dont agree but i do hate it when people do it on forums eschewing punctuation and capital letters which can often cause confusion and worst of all are the people who write one sentence per paragraph though your parentheses save you from that one

Re: Not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it's stealing my em dashes too

#40

Post by FabHK » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #9

I don't get the "em dash = AI" thing. MS Word and iOS have been autocorrecting em dashes for years now. Right? Am I the crazy one?

I don't think so. I think MS Word turns space+hyphen+space into space+en-dash+space. (Note "en" not "em".) It might turn two consecutive hyphens into an em-dash (not sure about it, because I prefer space+en-dash+space, not the em-dash without spaces).