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RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

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Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#101

Post by tavavex »

dathinab wrote: post #35
PTOB wrote: post #23

Two of the things I love intersect here: good punctuation and engineering documents. AI stole the em-dash from my toolkit. I have memorized a group of useful Alt-codes for engineering documents. They include symbols for diameter, delta, degrees, dot product, and trademark among others. If you're of a certain age, you will remember how useful Alt+255 was for folder naming. At the cusp of the 21st centuries, I added th…

never understood why -- => em-dash auto completion is only a think in some subset of application instead of being a standard behavior for (display) text inputs

Adding it to all text-editing environments could be problematic due to the decrement operator --

Many keyboard layouts for other languages use the right Alt (AltGr) key for less common symbols. Something like AltGr+(-) could work for the em dash.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#102

Post by bombcar »

megiddo wrote: post #70

I don't understand this em-dash crap. MS Word automatically converts dashes used for appositives into em-dashes. The world is awash with them.

People usually didn't know how to type them in comment boxes like this - either going with a simple hyphen or doing multiple dashes LaTeX-style: ---

Few people were doing replies in Word and then copying them in.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#103

Post by JCattheATM »

ssl-3 wrote: post #96
JCattheATM wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had freewritten, generally free expression type documents in mind when I wrote my statement, e.g. blog articles or opinion pieces. The problem is 'a matter of taste' can be used to excuse/justify anything.

That's more of a feature than it is a problem.

Agree to disagree. It allows badly written stuff to be defended, I would argue more often than alternative more acceptable case scenarios.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#104

Post by burnt-resistor »

megiddo wrote: post #70

I don't understand this em-dash crap. MS Word automatically converts dashes used for appositives into em-dashes. The world is awash with them.

It's magical / conspiracy theory thinking to believe em-dashes are somehow a perfect signal of LLM presence. There are no such watermarks. It's a mental shortcut by stupid people.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#105

Post by spacecadet404 »

This reads like a troll post, but it does pose a good question. Is there realistically any way to CAPTCHA anymore?

I'm thinking that we can't reliably sus out what's human and what's AI from here on out, and I don't think there's any good way to enforce something like a human emdash. The way we're going you won't be able to verify unless users scan their iris or a 3 letter agency vouches for them first.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#106

Post by burnt-resistor »

sionisrecur wrote: post #44

I've noticed LLMs tend to use the letter "a". I propose we stop using it to show people wrote e document.

We must utter only E-prime und Ettempto Controlled English becuse twisting ourselves in knots is preferred to verifying humen-originel input.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#108

Post by mkehrt »

Izkata wrote: post #88
wavemode wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always taught that overuse of the em-dash is poor style. Oftentimes using more specific punctuation (comma, semicolon, colon, parentheses) more clearly communicates the structure of a thought. Em-dashes are a lot more freeform and informal. They communicate a similar tone as when you're speaking and you suddenly stop to mention something that just occurred to you. In this sense, the idea that "em-dash = AI" has…

> Em-dashes are a lot more freeform and informal. They communicate a similar tone as when you're speaking and you suddenly stop to mention something that just occurred to you. Isn't that supposed to be en-dash? I swear I remember em-dash being more restricted in use.

No, an en-dash is used for a range, like "5–10", or in talking about two things and their relationship, like Franco–Prussian War.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#109

Post by snoren »

orthogonal_cube wrote: post #62
snoren wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real issue is that the social contract is broken because LLM output is attempted to be passed off as human work. I don’t think writing with AI makes a creation "worse." If anything, it makes it better, if you bring genuine idea and imagination to it first. The stigma comes from people being lazy and letting the AI do the heavy lifting of thinking. That’s where the "social contract" breaks. But using AI as a mult…

> The stigma comes from people being lazy and letting the AI do the heavy lifting of thinking. This is essentially my point. The AI emits an answer and people will, in turn, copy and paste the result as-is. It’s a repeat all over again of people simply copy-pasting something from Wikipedia and trying to pass it off as their own.

Exactly. The tool isn't the problem. The effort is. Wikipedia didn't make research worse. Copy-pasting Wikipedia without reading it did. Same pattern, different tool.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#110

Post by quuxplusone »

zahlman wrote: post #40

Three weeks early, surely?

Yeah; if it's already March, why NOT wait for the traditional joke-RFC day? (But I say this who shouldn't: I've several times thought "I'll post this on such-and-such day," and then when the day came, forgotten to post it. So maybe it's "better early than never"?)
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