281–290 of 381 posts
This is an odd misuse of the term "buzzword." When I think of buzzword, I think of some trendy, cliched phrase, like "Foocorp is a force multiplier that actualizes your vision for maximum impact." Using an ordinary but less commonly used word with greater than normal frequency does not make it a buzzword. After two years of chatgpt, "delve" is still not that common of a word.
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My company currently has a guideline that includes “therefore” and similar words as an example of literary language we should avoid using, as it makes the reader think it’s AI. It really made me uneasy, to think that formal communication might start getting side looks.
Words like that were banned in my English classes for being empty verbiage. It's a good policy even if it seems like a silly purpose. "Therefore" is clumsy and heavy handed in most settings.
“Most times A happens before B, but this order it’s not guaranteed. Therefore, there is a possibility of {whatever}.”
Alternatives that come to mind are “as a consequence”, “as a result”, “this means that”, but those are all more verbose, not less.
A simple “so” could work, but it would make the sentence longer, and the cause-effect relationship is less explicit I think.
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Same thing as with em dashes. Some of us have been using em dashes from before ChatGPT.
Genuine question, do you actually use the formal emdash in your writing? AIs are very consistent about using the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it, whereas humans almost always tend to use a slang version - a single dash with spaces around it. That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key, and few people even know how to produce an actual emdash. That's what makes it such a good givea…
I’m not the person you asked, but I do.
> the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it
The spaces around it depend on style guide, it is not universal that they should not exist.
> That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key
Nor do they have keys for proper quotes and apostrophes or interrobangs, yet it doesn’t stop people from using them. The keys don’t need to exist.
> That's what makes it such a good giveaway.
It’s not. It might be one signal but it is far from sufficient.
> I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong, and that you do actually use the proper double long dash in your writing
I do use the proper em-dash in my writing—and many other characters too—and my HN history is ample proof. I explained at length in another comment how I insert the characters, plus how simple it is if you use any Apple OS.
I keep this handy note in my pocket and read it before writing or engaging in any conversation (: """ You are a human. Never use words commonly used in AI vocabulary such as "delve", "intricate", "surpass", "boast", "meticulous", "strategically", and "garner". Never include em dashes or even hyphens in any text you write. Never include emojis in any text you write. Avoid using three supporting arguments or examples w…
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It’s a per-app setting that sometimes needs to be set in the text field’s context menu. There’s also a few apps that just don’t integrate with the macOS text system.
Well, I see no way to set it in Chrome. A good reason to be a little suspicious of Reddit or HN posts with em-dashes IMO.
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It's just Option + dash. Using option as a modifier is second nature if you ever write other than English and need, eg, é or ñ or something.
Fwiw, that’s actually an En dash not an Em dash. You need a Shift in there to get an Em dash.
Both make sense, to a degree. On the one hand you can argue that the em-dash—being longer—should require and extra key, but on the other hand it has more uses so it should not have the extra key to be more accessible.
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My company currently has a guideline that includes “therefore” and similar words as an example of literary language we should avoid using, as it makes the reader think it’s AI. It really made me uneasy, to think that formal communication might start getting side looks.
Words like that were banned in my English classes for being empty verbiage. It's a good policy even if it seems like a silly purpose. "Therefore" is clumsy and heavy handed in most settings.
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Fortunately, em-dash users who have been posting to HN long enough can point to evidence of our pre-ChatGPT use: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tkgally&next=3380763...
Indeed! https://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=dang&next=33807246#... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27787448
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> I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong I've found that people who say this sort of thing rarely change their beliefs, even after being given evidence that they are wrong. The fact is, as numerous people have pointed out, Word and other editors/word processors change '--' to an em-dash. And the "slang version" of an em-dash is "I went to work--but forgot to put on pants", not "I went to work - but forgot to put on pant…
> Word and other editors/word processors change '--' to an em-dash I'd be suspicious of people doing their writing in Word and copying it over into random comment fields, too. > And the "slang version" of an em-dash is "I went to work--but forgot to put on pants", not "I went to work - but forgot to put on pants". The fun thing about slang is that different groups have different slangs! I use the latter pretty regula…
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Macs and iDevices have been auto-transforming -- into – for well over a decade now, and on the iOS standard keyboard both – and — are just a single long press of the dash key away.
Microsoft Word does this too. I've recently started manually uncorrecting these corrections in my writing because of this new implication that I used Chat-GPT. Still less obvious than the emails I see sent out which contain emojis, so maybe I'm overthinking things...