AI ruined them for me. I used to use them all the time. Now, whenever I do, I get called out for using AI.
Em dashes are amazing
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Re: Em dashes are amazing
#12Test:
'There is no greater joy in life than typing a sentence, realising it needs a clarification, a caveat, an addendum, but in the same sentence, not a new one, and, guess what, the comma is right there for you. You want to package things neatly together, and the comma lets you do exactly this. Commas make writing feel like you are assembling lego bricks.'
I like using commas for spacing though em dashes do the same thing and avoid the run-on police?
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#13i typically enjoy a good profanity-laden rant, but something about this particular one feels very forced. this sentence, for example: "[...] What if someone points one out in my writing?”. Bitch, please.". i cant really put my finger on why, but it almost feels like the author wrote their rant, then came back afterwards with a quota of fuck/shit/bitch they wanted to meet, placing them wherever they could.
in any case, i mostly agree with the author that ai has co-opted too many things to be concerned about it anymore. i remember being linked a list of "1,000 words not to use" because ai used them a lot (e.g. "delve", "absolutely", etc.) and the venn diagram with the 1,000 most common english words was practically a circle. you would be unintelligible if you rigorously avoided them all. now i just write without care of my ai-similarity score.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#14It's interesting that an article extoling the virtues of the em-dash isn't using them correctly. They don't get spaces around them.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#15I feel like people only look at the form and ignore the substance of the content. Honestly, as long as the content itself is well written and the em-dash is used correctly, I don't think it really matters. When I first learned about em-dashes, I was told they were a mark of sophisticated, intellectual writing. But now people say they sound like AI. Is that really a bad thing? It's strange to see sophistication become…
I too find it a pity that the em-dash has been co-opted by AI. I use a double-hyphen ("--", the old school way of writing it), but fear that this will also become used by AI seeking a higher form of 'sophistication' as you put it. We're experiencing broad scale changes in the sentiment of style in written English. I don't know what the best approach to take here is necessarily, but the more I see language evolving ov…
> ("--", the old school way of writing it)
The old school of writing it in digital documents. Typesetting predates and is not limited to digital documents.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#16AI ruined them for me. I used to use them all the time. Now, whenever I do, I get called out for using AI.
Don’t let the haters win.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#17AI ruined them for me. I used to use them all the time. Now, whenever I do, I get called out for using AI.
Same. It is really annoying to write something and have someone say, “just so you know, em dashes makes it obvious it was written by AI.” You know how else uses em dashes? People who know how to write.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#18I didn't know that AP style recommended spaces either side of the em dash. Here in the UK we generally use en dashes instead, and I thought em dashes always had no spaces. Apparently the wire machines that AP sent their news out by in olden times couldn't always do en dashes.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#19One of the more memorable and influential library finds for me was an article in _Advertising Age_ which enumerated all of the special characters which should be set so as to accurately communicate, so in addition to en and em dashes it noted:
- − (minus symbol) for use in math equations or to indicate a negative
- I believe it also noted that there were two forms for the hyphen, normal and discretionary
- × (multiplication symbol) for use in dimensions and when actually indicating multiplication
- ′ and ″ (single and double primes) for use when indicating feet and inches, or minutes and seconds
- it also made explicit the difference between º (ordinal o) and ° (degree symbol) and noted when to make use of the other ordinals
- … while available as a special character, it is often better to construct this using suitably sized non-breaking spaces
- © ® ™ ℠ ℗ (copyright and so forth) to indicate such legal constructs as appropriate
- the various spaces en and em space, non-breaking flex space, &c.
I _think_ I still have a photocopy somewhere, but really should find a copy of the actual magazine....
The far more egregious and reprehensible thing is that many books now are published using quite pedestrian typing of the near equivalents from the keyboard as opposed to actually typing the correct signs.
I wrote a bit on this at:
https://tug.org/texshowcase/onetype.pdf
(note that it intended to be printed, folded, cut in the center, then re-folded so as to make a "hot dog" booklet: https://www.makingbooks.com/hotdog.shtml )
EDIT: That said, folks should be sure to get:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41600.The_Mac_is_Not_a_T...
or
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/358248.The_PC_is_Not_a_T...
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#20It's interesting that an article extoling the virtues of the em-dash isn't using them correctly. They don't get spaces around them.
I have seen this more and more and I don’t understand it.