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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

#621

Post by sjs382 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #527
pluc wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idiocracy called this "talking like a fag".

There's a bit in Anathem about the secular society sometimes having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems. Immediately made me think of the hospital scene in Idiocracy... and also the way some people make heavy use of emojis.

> having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems

What about reverting to referencing moving pictures?

Or was this intended to be self-referential and I missed the joke? :)

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

#622

Post by just6979 »

normie3000 wrote: post #519
sevensor wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah, Spanish notation.

You have to invert the front one! (⸵ Of course, only noticable if it's a winky ;)

Turned Semicolon (U+2E35 ⸵)

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

#623

Post by rzzzt »

aendruk wrote: post #528
rzzzt wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

℃ and ℉ to the rescue! https://graphemica.com/%E2%84%83

> this is a compatibility character provided for roundtrip compatibility with legacy encodings. […] The Unicode standard explicitly discourages the use of this character ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#Unicode_character )

I'm sort of buying and not buying this interpretation. Celsius is discussed under section "Unit symbols" in the PDF (page 8-9 of the linked Chapter 22), where the quoted "it is better" sentence appears...

...then immediately afterwards a new section named "Compatibility" starts where the use of code points that are composites of several letters, e.g. ℡ and ℻ are indeed discouraged, suggesting they be spelled out in full as TEL and FAX instead.

Do you feel ℃ falls into a continuation/overlap between these two sections?

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

#624

Post by mikkupikku »

sjs382 wrote: post #621
mikkupikku wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bit in Anathem about the secular society sometimes having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems. Immediately made me think of the hospital scene in Idiocracy... and also the way some people make heavy use of emojis.

> having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems What about reverting to referencing moving pictures? Or was this intended to be self-referential and I missed the joke? :)

Anathem is a book ;)

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

#625

Post by rlpb »

sjs382 wrote: post #621
mikkupikku wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bit in Anathem about the secular society sometimes having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems. Immediately made me think of the hospital scene in Idiocracy... and also the way some people make heavy use of emojis.

> having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems What about reverting to referencing moving pictures? Or was this intended to be self-referential and I missed the joke? :)

Shaka, when the walls fell

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

#626

Post by ASalazarMX »

mlrtime wrote: post #587
ASalazarMX wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I didn't know it was discontinued in 2021. It was my favorite maple syrup growing up.

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

#627

Post by chirayuk »

colechristensen wrote: post #298
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 rage–induced habit of ignoring typos caused by the iPhone autocorrect and general abuse of English is suddenly authentic and not lazy and slightly obnoxious (ok maybe it's still those things too) >I put the em dash on modifier+dash This is the default on Macs

It's Option Shift "-" for the em-dash. Option "-" is the en-dash.

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

#628

Post by BobbyTables2 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #624
sjs382 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems What about reverting to referencing moving pictures? Or was this intended to be self-referential and I missed the joke? :)

Anathem is a book ;)

Probably should also explain how to use a book…

You’re talking about ancient technology here…

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

#629

Post by AlexeyBelov »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #333
vjerancrnjak wrote: post #314

On reddit it's even worse, I feel like Reddit is internally having their own bots for engagement bait. As someone who loves LaTeX, I can't imagine ever spending so much time on typography on online forums, italics, bold, emdashes, headers, sections. I quit reddit and will quit hn as well if situation worsens.

I have the sneaking suspicion that reddit has allowed and facilitated astroturfing for over a decade. As in, providing accounts, eliminating rate limits, artificially boosting posts and comments, and aggressively shadow banned contrary opinions. This is definitely a known phenomenon on a auto moderator level but I bet reddit ownership is complicit in it too

They were caught multiple times doing shady automated things. Most recently auto-translating posts and misleading search engine users with this. At this point there is no goodwill.
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