Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

marginalia.nu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 643 posts

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#281

Post by steve_adams_86 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #269
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to curb my usage of 'actually' too. Like you I came to think of it as an indirect, fluffy discourse marker that should be replaced with more direct language. I'm totally fine with the word itself, but not with overuse of it or placing it where it clearly doesn't belong. And I did that a lot, I think. I suspect if you reviewed my HN comments, it's littered with 'actually' a ton. Also "I think...", "I feel like..…

Like, no kidding I think the thing I'm expressing. Why state that? One reason might be to acknowledge that you're not being prescriptive, but leaving room for a subjective POV in situations that call for it. Likewise, the GP's use of "actually" acknowledges the contrast between what one might expect (that some preliminary type-checking might happen during initial parsing) and what in fact happens (no type checks occu…

Absolutely, I was being overly reductive. Both "I think" and "actually" do serve useful purposes, and I'm being critical of redundant or over-use of them (which I tend to do).

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#282

Post by ge96 »

SkyeCA wrote: post #33

If I see an em-dash in a comment I stop reading and I've seriously considered setting up a filter across multiple sites to remove any comments containing one. I know there are legitimate usecases for the em-dash, but a few paragraphs (at most) of text in an HN/Reddit comment? Into the trash it goes.

trying to remember what is the grammatical purpose of it when writing

trying to remember last time I used it

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#283

Post by rob »

Most of the bots I've caught on here don't really use em dashes at all.

For example, here's an active bot that posted 30 mins ago (as of this comment):

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=aplomb1026

Examine the last two detailed comments it made and you'll see the timestamps show they were posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155655

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155648

If it wasn't for them misconfiguring their bot and having it post so quickly, these would go by undetected and most people would engage with them. The comments themselves seem "normal" at first glance.

---

Other bots:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dirtytoken7

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fdefitte

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#284

Post by mikkupikku »

squeefers wrote: post #27
loeg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karma aside, flooding the comments with a chosen narrative via army of bots seems like it's already happening. I suppose the bots can also do voting rings, but they don't necessarily need to.

> Karma aside, flooding the comments with a chosen narrative via army of bots seems like it's already happening. again with the conspiracy theories

People do conspire you know.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#285

Post by e2le »

onion2k wrote: post #5

I’ve had this sense that HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months. Is it possible to differentiate between a bot, and a human using AI to 'improve' the quality of their comment where some of the content might be AI written but not all? I don't think it is.

> human using AI to 'improve' the quality of their comment

I want to hear people in their own voice, their own ideas, with their own words. I have no interest in reading AI generated comments with the same prose, vocabulary, and grammar.

I don't care if your writing is bad.

Additionally, I am sceptical that using AI to write comments on your behalf creates opportunities for self-improvement. I suspect this is all leading to a death of diversity in writing where comments increasingly have an aura of sameness.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#287

Post by colin_fraizer »

mrandish wrote: post #272

Prior to the rise of LLM-written posts and the natural reaction of hair-trigger suspicion, I used to em and en dash fairly often in posts on HN. No reason really other than being a bit of a typography geek who happens to have always used dashes in casual writing instead of semicolons. So when I was setting up a modifier-key keyboard layer with AHK many years ago I put the em dash on modifier+dash just because I could…

[dead]

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#288

Post by bombcar »

mardifoufs wrote: post #205
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a big dash

For you. But is it the biggest dash? And what is its intended purpose? I've never seen one that big before.

⸻ the three em dash

apparently used like ellipses … to indicate part of a quote was removed.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#289

Post by halper »

stego-tech wrote: post #122
devb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just used them to reflect pauses in my speech for tangents - and old habit from my IRC days. The tell here is that you used a hyphen, not an em-dash.

Okay, see, that's context even I forget, but you're right and bears repeating: This `-` is a hyphen, which I love , even if I'm fairly sure I'm not using it correctly in grammar a lot of the time. This `--` is an EM-Dash, apparently, which is also what I never use but I also thought was just a hyphen in a different context (incorrect!).

It is probably even a hyphen-minus, so called because on most early keyboards one character had to do to represent both a hyphen and a minus. In Unicode, there is a separate code point for an unambiguous hyphen. There is also a non-breaking hyphen as well as the various dashes discussed here.

And "--" is absolutely just two hyphen-minuses, not an em-dash (—).

Post reply on HN