Spaced en dashes are far more common internationally. Em dashes are primarily a US American tradition.
Em dashes are amazing
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Re: Em dashes are amazing
#32I get it. But I never would have until I built muscle memory for the keyboard shortcut.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#33LLMs use em- dashes because they appear in the training set. In other words, humans use them a lot. Such a weird issue to be adopted as an indicator of robot text.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#34> “But what would people think of my writing if I ever used an em dash? What if someone points one out in my writing?”. Bitch, please.
Hell yes, and ROFL. I’m tired of em dashes being cited as evidence of AI.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#35I 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…
The problem is that the substancelessness of AI writing nowadays tends to be subtle and well-hidden (but huge). Focusing on superficial "tells" is basically an attempt of a quick, cheap defense against the imbalance of human effort, where someone can spend a few dollars and a few minutes and e.g. generate dozens of PRs that would take many hours of real human effort to process and fix the deeper shortcomings of.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#36Test: '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 sam…
I would always prefer to do:
"There is no greater joy in life than typing a sentence, realising it needs a clarification, a caveat, an addendum (in the same sentence, not a new one) and, guess what, parentheses are right there for you."
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#37and here i thought "option -" was an em-dash, but no, it's an _en_-dash.
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#38AI ruined them for me. I used to use them all the time. Now, whenever I do, I get called out for using AI.
Same. Em dashes have been around a lot longer than AI. Let’s take ‘em (pardon the pun) back!
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#39AI 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.
So... fuck 'em? Hit 'em with a: "You're absolutely right — em dashes are a common signifier of AI" and go about your business. Anyone creating on the internet[1] is running laps around the class of losers who run from post to post dropping useless comments.
[1]: I'd even go so far as to extend that "anyone" to: "anyone creating, even with AI assistance!"
Re: Em dashes are amazing
#40I still use them unapologetically. I don't give a shit about your AI purity tests, thank you.