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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

#581

Post by andreareina »

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…

I'm given to understand that you've got to have your mic pretty close up to keep noise down. You don't have to eat it, but it wants to be close enough that it's going to be in frame.

Ed: I'm sure there's cargo culting going on but the visibility of the mic isn't only performative.

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

#582

Post by 0x38B »

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…

Synthetic example:

"Вот его, нет, не допустили (сама знаешь, почему)))"

My translation:

"But him - no, they didn't let him in (of course you know why :)"

When I went from texting friends in Russian or Ukrainian back to English, I missed right parentheses as a smiley; one or two - hi), hello)) - to me are like a smile, by ))) and )))) there's some laughing or some other joke going on. Native speakers could weigh in; my native tongue is English.

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

#583

Post by blooalien »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #424
cwnyth wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ex-academic here. I too use/tended to use em-dashes quite a bit. It's easy to compose in Linux (Gnome) with a real keyboard: Ctrl Shift U 2014 is ingrained in my head from using them all the time in my academic work.

Are you familiar with the 'Compose' key/xcompose?

Indeed, the compose key is how I've always handled easy access to additional (proper? complete?) punctuation (and several other useful characters) capabilities on desktop Linux for many years now. I usually set the Caps-Lock key to my compose key because I literally never use Caps-Lock anyhow, so it's nice to turn it into a useful key. :)

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

#584

Post by satiric »

hhjinks wrote: post #579
mikenew wrote: post #326

This 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…

Prevent pasting comments. Implement a naive check for time spent typing the comment, and shadowban posts that don't pass the criteria. Add a 1 minute wait and captcha for posting. That'd drastically reduce the amount of low effort posts, both human-written and generated.

Preventing pasting would drastically reduce how often people cite their sources; no one wants to hand copy a long url.

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

#585

Post by hojinkoh »

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…

I still have em-dash pinned at the top of my clipboard manager. Though nowadays I'm training myself to use some more definitely incorrect punctuations ((like this)) in informal scenarios;; hopefully LLMs won't catch up to such strange usage anytime soon.

Broken sentences. Also useful. Like in some literature works.

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

#586

Post by ttamslam »

hhjinks wrote: post #579
mikenew wrote: post #326

This 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…

Prevent pasting comments. Implement a naive check for time spent typing the comment, and shadowban posts that don't pass the criteria. Add a 1 minute wait and captcha for posting. That'd drastically reduce the amount of low effort posts, both human-written and generated.

I've been working on this tool to address this same issue in other communities: https://www.ityped.it/

It's certainly not perfect, but similar to what you mention.

p: https://www.ityped.it/p/WIiTYfdxQ5ww

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

#587

Post by mlrtime »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #445
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…

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

Interesting use of "Aunt Jemima" that nobody caught on, why did you use this particularly, afaik it doesn't exist anymore for being "racist"?

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

#588

Post by pcchristie »

marssaxman wrote: post #530
piskov wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using a dynamic microphone, most of the time it will be in frame because best distance is around 7cm from your mouth.

Sure, but when you see someone holding up a lav mic between their thumb and forefinger, that's not audio engineering; that has to be social signaling, or perhaps uninformed mimicry.

It's uninformed mimicry. Someone very close to me (I won't name names!) bought one and did it the other day for their business and I was absolutely shocked when I saw their draft video. I asked them what they thought the clip was for.

It's a massive trend all over IG and TikTok these days as there's a lot of mobile-friendly consumer gear that brings your Social Media Content up a fairly large way for fairly low cost. Ironically, the mimicry probably spreads because those that know what they're doing partially or fully conceal it which is by definition less likely to be noticed and therefore imitated by first timers/novices.

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

#589

Post by OrangeMusic »

d4mi3n wrote: post #50

I'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.

I would add a disclaimer to the end of all my posts.

(Disclaimer: the use of em-dashes doesn't prove this was AI-generated — I can assure you I wrote this myself.)

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