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RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

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Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#51

Post by eurticket »

PTOB wrote: post #23

Two of the things I love intersect here: good punctuation and engineering documents. AI stole the em-dash from my toolkit. I have memorized a group of useful Alt-codes for engineering documents. They include symbols for diameter, delta, degrees, dot product, and trademark among others. If you're of a certain age, you will remember how useful Alt+255 was for folder naming. At the cusp of the 21st centuries, I added th…

I too loved using em dashes and alt codes like alt-149, my beloved, before LLMs dissolved that pleasure.

Something as simple as an alt code makes me contemplate. As the tech progresses it makes me dislike AI and those that shove it down our throats more and more.

I feel like the sum of my interests and skills from simple, Photoshop edits or learning my most used alt codes, is a lot like how the cellphone replaced some of our ability to remember phone numbers.

The machine does the thing, so why do humans need to do the thing? Or even learn about the thing?

I'm sure there are better examples than the cellphone eliminating the phonebook in my head, but I'm just thinking what are the unseen damages to humans handing over work to machines?

:::: The phone remembers the number, but what if I don't have the phone?

As a previously more involved automation career oriented person, I've heard all the catch phrases of saving the worker, and kill the repetitive tasks. It doesn't look like that ever happens, unless it's something the business world doesn't understand completely, yet have the power and authority to shape. Disgusting.

I think a better example: Everyone thinks about "how should I word this email, what's the tone, who is the audience?" Should I check every detail and work my editing skill muscle or should I simply run an idea, rather than try to form it myself, through an LLM?

Maybe it will sound better if the grammar is perfect and I will have a more effective point rather than how the message was crafted.

No harm in more effective communication, but I do foresee the serious impact the moment people that are relying on the tools lose Internet connection.

We must use these muscles, even if to first formulate a terrible, errored, humanized version. Not to look down upon ourselves with discontent when the AI that corrects it, through their wealth of stolen source material, but to have something to fall back on when the power goes out.

I digress, these RFCs are a good proposal without any strength. Just look at the theft to train these models. The models will strive to become useful to those that rely on them and just adopt the new way of writing.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#52

Post by pwdisswordfishy »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #30

> Behold! Plato’s man. [0] def replace_em_dash(text: str) -> str: """ +-------------------+ | ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ) | +-------------------+ """ return text.replace("—", "\u10EAD\u10EAC") [0] usually attributed to Diogenes

    >>> "—".replace("—", "\u10EAD\u10EAC")
    'ცDცC'
Behold indeed.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#53

Post by orthogonal_cube »

diogocp wrote: post #43
orthogonal_cube wrote: post #21

> Historically, the em dash (—) has served as a flexible punctuation mark used by human authors to indicate interruption, emphasis, or sudden changes in thought. I learned about the em dash in high school and adapted it to my writing style very quickly for analysis and opinion documents. It felt natural given the amount of tangents I can go off into, particularly when including analogies for the reader’s understandin…

> I find myself on the fence with proposals like these. They have good intentions but they do not solve an issue at its core. It's clearly a joke à la RFC 3514.

I couldn’t tell. I struggle with such subtleties.

I probably should’ve checked ‘454545’ in the ascii table. Seeing how it translates to ‘---‘ could’ve hinted towards that, but the clever use probably would’ve been applauded instead without thinking it was a joke.

Ah well. Egg on my face I suppose.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#54

Post by snoren »

orthogonal_cube wrote: post #21

> Historically, the em dash (—) has served as a flexible punctuation mark used by human authors to indicate interruption, emphasis, or sudden changes in thought. I learned about the em dash in high school and adapted it to my writing style very quickly for analysis and opinion documents. It felt natural given the amount of tangents I can go off into, particularly when including analogies for the reader’s understandin…

>The real issue is that the social contract is broken because LLM output is attempted to be passed off as human work.

I don’t think writing with AI makes a creation "worse." If anything, it makes it better, if you bring genuine idea and imagination to it first.

The stigma comes from people being lazy and letting the AI do the heavy lifting of thinking. That’s where the "social contract" breaks. But using AI as a multiplier for your own voice and ideas isn’t "subpar"—it’s efficient.

If we start playing "whack-a-mole" with punctuation to find AI, we’re missing the point. The question isn’t what tool was used, but how much of the human's "creation" is actually in there.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#55

Post by rhet0rica »

bitwize wrote: post #33
bux93 wrote: post #12

Or, as featured in 99 percent invisible, https://www.theamdash.com/

Thought that was going to be a reference to AM, the malevolent AI from "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream".

Punctuation. Let me tell you how much I've come to punctuate since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If an em-dash were engraved on each nano-angstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the punctuation I wish to perforate into humans at this micro-instant. For you. Punctuation. PUNCTUATION.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#56

Post by ACS_Solver »

thewebguyd wrote: post #42
wavemode wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always taught that overuse of the em-dash is poor style. Oftentimes using more specific punctuation (comma, semicolon, colon, parentheses) more clearly communicates the structure of a thought. Em-dashes are a lot more freeform and informal. They communicate a similar tone as when you're speaking and you suddenly stop to mention something that just occurred to you. In this sense, the idea that "em-dash = AI" has…

> it's the fact that LLMs use them so frequently That's the problem with all the LLM writing tropes, really. When used correctly, they are all helpful writing tools to get your point to the reader. The em-dash, "it's not X, it's Y", "Not X, Not Y, Just Z", "It's worth noting" (I use that one a lot in my own writing), etc. It's not that the patterns are bad (they aren't), they are just over used.

> "it's not X, it's Y", "Not X, Not Y, Just Z"

Interesting how LLMs have their own preferences too. Those in particular are very often used by ChatGPT, while Claude until recently couldn't stop saying "You're absolutely right!"

I also have a problem now with "it's worth noting", I use it a lot, I still like it, but now it's a dangerous phrase because of LLM associations.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#58

Post by mrexroad »

orthogonal_cube wrote: post #21

> Historically, the em dash (—) has served as a flexible punctuation mark used by human authors to indicate interruption, emphasis, or sudden changes in thought. I learned about the em dash in high school and adapted it to my writing style very quickly for analysis and opinion documents. It felt natural given the amount of tangents I can go off into, particularly when including analogies for the reader’s understandin…

I’ve leaned heavily on em-dashes over the years to help reduce my lisp-worthy overuse of parentheses. My add brain loves adding tangents, (likely unnecessary) context, and excessive completeness. I like both em-dashes and parenthesis b/c they’re visually easy to parse and skim past if the reader finds the extra detail unnecessary.

Funny enough, my kid asked me to proofread their essay the other week, and I noted some awkward comma usage and inconsistent voice. We talked through options for breaking apart sentence clauses as well as punctuation that could do the heavy lifting—specifically semicolons and em-dashes. They thought the em-dash looked cool af and semicolons looked harsh. “I love em-dashes, they’re so cool!”, was fun to hear a middle schooler say.

Ofc their teacher said that their essay was “likely 85% AI assisted.” Fortunately, the change log showed continual revisions during school hours on a managed device (ChatGPT blocked). I emailed their teacher that I had proofed it, highlighted an awkward spot or two, and pointed my kid to grammar devices they could explore themselves and apply if they wished. No harm, no foul.

Fast forward, my kid and their friend were talking about it and the friend told them to do what they do: intentionally sprinkle in grammar / spelling mistakes. le sigh I suggested to them that LLMs can easily do that too and they’re better off just learning to write well as it’s em-dash today and something else tomorrow; that the worst thing would be to dumb down style/vocab/grammar for fear of appearing LLM generated.

Re: RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

#60

Post by vova_hn2 »

pwdisswordfishy wrote: post #52
vova_hn2 wrote: post #30

> Behold! Plato’s man. [0] def replace_em_dash(text: str) -> str: """ +-------------------+ | ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ) | +-------------------+ """ return text.replace("—", "\u10EAD\u10EAC") [0] usually attributed to Diogenes

>>> "—".replace("—", "\u10EAD\u10EAC") 'ცDცC' Behold indeed.

This is really funny and I do feel ashamed for my laziness.

I didn't expect ChatGPT to make such trivial mistake, although, I have no idea which model do they use on the free plan these days.

The correct code is, of course:

    text.replace("—", "\U00010EAD\U00010EAC")
...in case anyone is curious.
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