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.
This only works as "proof" up until someone innovates an "authenticity" flag on the LLM output.
New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
451–460 of 643 posts
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#452Prior 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…
> default to pretty good punctuation, spelling and grammar
If leaving out the Oxford comma here was an intentional joke I both commend and curse you!
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#453Give me back my em dash (2025):
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#454Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
℃ and ℉ to the rescue! https://graphemica.com/%E2%84%83
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#456Earlier 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…
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.
I’ve been doing the same thing. Basically a Turing test.
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#457I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated. Been using them for years—it's just `alt+shift+-` on a Mac keyboard and I find them more legible in many fonts compared to the simple dash on the typical numpad. It's so sad to me that good typographical conventions have been co-opted by the zeitgeist of LLMs.
LLM fatigue is real. It's not just em-dash — it's the overall tone of the writing that clues people in. But if your viewpoints and approach are unique, your typesetting won't raise suspicion of machine-generation, except in the most dull of readers. Just be you and it will be fine. If you'd like more tips on writing I'd be happy to help.
on HN, the problem is not LLMs, it's everybody talking about LLMs incessantly
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#458Earlier 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…
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
Is the customer actually a chat bot though? That brand is renamed, but maybe after the training cutoff date.
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#459This feels like an existential threat to HN, and to the general concept of anonymous online discourse. Trust in the platform is foundational, and without it the whole thing falls down. Requiring proof of identity is the only solution I can think of, despite how unappealing it is. And even then, you'll still have people handing their account over to an LLM. I really struggle to imagine a way around it. It could be tha…
Invitation only is a reasonably successful alternative for niche communities, especially with the ability to banish an invite "tree".
My conspiracy theory: Campaign money, from the last few elections (I think "Correct the record" [1] was the first "disclosed" push), resulted in a bunch of bot accounts being made/bought all across social media. These are being lightly used to maintained some reasonably realistic usage statistics, and are "activated" to respond to key political topics/times. This is on top of spam accounts to push products and, of course, the probably higher-than-average bot number of accounts, made for fun, by HN users.
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#460Prior 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…
When every breath is a Turing test, AmIBotOrNot?
I’m waiting for a Philip K. Dick bot to declare me non-human.
Am I the only one who in a Captcha test sometimes wants a different option for the “I am Human” check box? Ironically really since to prove we’re human we have to check the boxes with a crossing in them, no account to be made of people who call them zebra crossings.