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I miss using em dashes

bassi.li

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Re: I miss using em dashes

#61

Post by floxy »

buu700 wrote: post #19

I wouldn't worry about it. A year ago the red flag du jour was "delve"; this year it's em dashes; next year it'll be something else. In any case, this is a very online topic that I assume only a vocal minority are hung up on in the first place. If you picked a random person off the street and asked for their thoughts on em dashes, you'd probably get a blank stare. Eventually, as models and their users both improve, w…

>If you picked a random person off the street and asked for their thoughts on em dashes, you'd probably get a blank stare.

But the people you will reach online will be online, and not some random person-off-the-street. The average person on the street will give the same blank stare on the topic of compilers, regular expressions, black-holes, or robotics, but I still want to read about those topics. And if I want an LLM's take on those topics, everyone knows where to turn to get that.

Re: I miss using em dashes

#62

Post by wpollock »

throw0101c wrote: post #55
wpollock wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why people let others change them. I keep punctuating like it's the 20th Century. In the 20th century, there were two spaces after an end of sentence period. (I still do that.)

> In the 20th century, there were two spaces after an end of sentence period. (I still do that.) Only if you used a typewriter. I was using (La)TeX in the twentieth (1990s), and it defaulted to a rough equivalent of 1.5 spaces (see \spacefactor). Two ('full') space characters were added because of (tele)typewriters and their fixed width fonts, and this was generally not used in 'properly' published works with proport…

Good to know! I am reminded of using *roff in the 1980s. Punctuation such as periods at the end of lines marked end of sentences, and nroff would insert two spaces in that case.

  In HN, you can force two spaces between
  sentences.  But only in code blocks.

Re: I miss using em dashes

#64

Post by jrsdav »

I’ve recently developed a serious allergy to this phrasing:

> “This was not just X; it’s really Y”

Here are some real examples taken from various sources:

> "Regenerative businesses don't just minimise harm; they actively create positive change for the environment and people."

> "This milestone isn’t just about our growth. It’s about deepening our commitment to you…"

> "This wasn’t just a market rally. It was a real-time lesson in how quickly sentiment can fracture and recover when fundamentals remain intact."

Hard to say for certain that this is AI slop, but just like em dashes, I see it routinely pop up in LLM prose. And I feel like it’s infected nearly everything I’ve read that was written within the last year.

Re: I miss using em dashes

#65

Post by bigstrat2003 »

wpollock wrote: post #32
JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

I'm not sure why people let others change them. I keep punctuating like it's the 20th Century.

> I'm not sure why people let others change them. I keep punctuating like it's the 20th Century. In the 20th century, there were two spaces after an end of sentence period. (I still do that.)

When I was growing up (90s), we were taught that either one or two spaces was acceptable practice.

Re: I miss using em dashes

#66

Post by anon84873628 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #50
anon84873628 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might even realize that the AI is using the em-dash precisely because of how often it was used in the training text.

That's a fair point. I'll admit that LLM em-dash usage likely matches its prevalence in the corpus. However, online message boards and chat is a subset of that corpus that may have a significantly different distribution of em-dash prevalence. This is necessary nuance that I'll have take into consideration. Thank you.

Eh, I wasn't trying to put you on blast or anything. Obviously there is a lot of nuance to how/why the LLM uses them. I just think the whole "em dash == AI" thing is stupid and way overblown. I wish the people who say that would realize it obviously learned them from somewhere.

Re: I miss using em dashes

#68

Post by kbrkbr »

Dwedit wrote: post #45
wpollock wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why people let others change them. I keep punctuating like it's the 20th Century. In the 20th century, there were two spaces after an end of sentence period. (I still do that.)

Very annoying how HTML changes your two spaces into one space.

Try   [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space (see specifically the example section)

Re: I miss using em dashes

#70

Post by tamimio »

People will soon start accepting imperfections as a sign of genuine and authentic in any work that was done, and typos/mistakes as some sort of quick indicator that it was human made. Refreshing to be honest, finally people will embrace the fact that we are humans and we are supposed to do mistakes, instead of the tiring, mentally exhausting, perfectionist behavior. I remember seeing here in HN a company called ‘good enough’ or something along those lines, perfect to be imperfect!
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