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New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

marginalia.nu

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

#441

Post by dylan604 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #341
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…

Have the same problem but with bullet points, which I learned to type years ago and have used on HN for a long time: • Like • This (option-8 on a Mac US keyboard layout). Now it looks like something only an LLM would do.

I love using ° with is the opt-shift-8 when posting temps to indicate I'm on a real keyboard and not some device. Plus, it's just faster than typing degrees

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

#442

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

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…

> Now someone may search old posts without a time cutoff and assume I'm an LLM.

I use em dashes, and I don't care whether or not someone assumes I'm an LLM. Typography exists for a reason.

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

#443

Post by marginalia_nu »

mike_hearn wrote: post #344
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you articulate on the column meanings more? Noob new means nothing to me.

Maybe that means you're a net newbie (noobie, noob). noob = new user new = I think this might be a mistake? Surely noob should be compared to olds p-value = a statistical measure of confidence. In academic science a value < 0.05 is considered "statistically significant".

It's from where the comment is sourced.

/noobcomments vs /newcomments. New is new as in recent.

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

#444

Post by mghackerlady »

sevensor wrote: post #426
mghackerlady wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (lik…

The answer is obviously to balance your smiley faces and wrap the entire statement in the smiley face sentiment. ((: Like this :))

I like this simply for the absurdity of it, but will only use it when the entire parenthetical is modified by the smiley instead of a single word or phrase (:since I really like it:) but (it looks ugly, no hard feelings :) )

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

#445

Post by ASalazarMX »

marssaxman wrote: post #301
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…

My teenager recently asked me why I write like a chatbot, apparently unaware that some human beings prefer to write in complete sentences with attention to details like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization, and that LLMs were trained on this sort of writing. This makes me think of the fad where people on youtube will hold a microphone up in frame, because it somehow connotes authenticity. I'm sure some…

2040 at Wal-Mart:

- Customer: Excuse me, I'm looking for the Aunt Jemima maple syrup. Can you point me in the right direction?

- Employee: y u ask like chatbot

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

#446

Post by mghackerlady »

rpastuszak wrote: post #408
mghackerlady wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (lik…

Your comment made me realise that there's logic to this (like this :) , since in HTML we can: do this and this instead of: ... and instead of You might like Lisp, but what you're saying reminds me of the late 00s/early 2010s xHTML2 vs. HTML5 debate :)

I'm an avid defender of xHTML. You can pry it from my cold dead hands

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

#447

Post by rzzzt »

Animats wrote: post #439
marssaxman wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My teenager recently asked me why I write like a chatbot, apparently unaware that some human beings prefer to write in complete sentences with attention to details like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization, and that LLMs were trained on this sort of writing. This makes me think of the fad where people on youtube will hold a microphone up in frame, because it somehow connotes authenticity. I'm sure some…

> people on youtube will hold a microphone up in frame, Now you need a really big microphone, something that looks like it was built in 1952.

Lapel mic clipped on a cooking utensil works as well.

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

#448

Post by MarsIronPI »

mghackerlady wrote: post #365
pvtmert wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context. Not like I have a perfect writing anyway, but at least I could prove that it was self-written, not an auto-generated slop. (Could be self-written slop though :) This applies not only work-stuff itself also to the job-applications/cv/resume and cover-letters.

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (lik…

The relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/541

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

#450

Post by mghackerlady »

tuckerman wrote: post #411
mghackerlady wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (lik…

Post C++11 you can just do (like this:)), no extra space needed before the last parenthesis.

But then it looks like I'm using a double smiley[0] which I do actually use on occasion

[0] :))

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